Defeating planetary shields without a Death Star and Executor

[Adam Reynolds]

Because I haven't come up with a poorly supported theory in a while:

Largely drawing upon the fairly well known Brian Young theory that deflector shields are permeable to certain attacks as a result of their slow speed, I was wondering if there is a way to break through planetary shields without destroying them entirely.

Based on the visual way we see theater shields working, in which shields are permeable at the point of ground contact, in which whatever is penetrating the shields in effect appears as part of the ground, I wonder if shields in space work on a similar principle, but instead of appearing as part of the ground, the objective is instead to appear as part of the shield itself.

Also in TPM, we see the TF tanks fire upon the Gungan shield before sending in their droids, visibly weakening it. I wonder if the same effect is sometimes requires against shields in space as well, that when it is somewhat weaker it gives greater chances for fighters to fly through.

If that is the case, the same thing could apply to planetary shields. Instead of having enough firepower to drop them outright, you could instead penetrate those shields locally with landing craft.

This might explain what the bow mounted torpedo launchers on Venators and Acclamators are for. They are a means to deliver immediate firepower to an opposing planetary shield without drawing from the shields of the ship that are needed to defeat the system the way turbolasers would. Though it is also likely that as shields became more powerful during the war, they became ineffective, hence the ultimate need for the Death Star. But when it was destroyed, the Empire needed a stopgap solution.

Going back to Executor, it is interesting just how ineffective it is at Endor. While this is partially a result of the Emperor's orders, it could also be a result of Executor not actually being designed for fleet actions. What if its real purpose is to weaken shields enough that dropships can achieve local penetration? Its purpose as a command ship also fits this. The Blue Ridge class is an amphibious command ship.

[Galvatron]

If that is the case, the same thing could apply to planetary shields. Instead of having enough firepower to drop them outright, you could instead penetrate those shields locally with landing craft.

But they didn't do that at Hoth.

[Reyvan]

I've always interpreted what happened at the battle of Naboo to be the droid commander deciding its tanks didn't have the firepower to breach the shields, and instead sending in the battle droids, not that the shields had been weakened through the bombardment to an extent that would allow the battle droids to walk through.

The droids were going up against a mostly unknown enemy with unknown capabilities, and so the droid commander decided to see if he could blast them into submission without wasting droids. When it realized that was impossible it switched to the more expensive solution of just swamping them with droids.

[Sea Skimmer]

Agreed on that Reyvan. The shield didn't seem affected at all.

Executor couldn't bring down the rebel shield on Hoth, so I highly doubt it was intended to breach even larger scale planetary sized shields. It was probably meant as half mobile base, half battleship and just got locally overwhelmed by a rebel force which was never too well defined on screen.

Star Wars shields seem to most often act like armor, either they blunt a hit more or less completely except some shock movement, or they collapse from a hit and real damage takes place, though it may be reduced. Sometimes this is a local effect, other times general, which might be down to shield generator configurations that vary from ship to ship, perhaps for differing performance reasons. They usually don't seem like they have any kind of power rating, its on or off. If its not powerful enough to stop a shot it fails completely. The universe seems slanted towards favoring a large mass of armor on ships and ground vehicles, which means its mass competitive protection with shields, or it may well be, favored precisely because shields can be overwhelmed too easily.

Speed sensitivity does seem to be a thing, and perhaps explains both why heavy ships can be boarded so easily and be vulnerable to fairly low velocity starfighter weapons. Perhaps the shields on the heaviest ships are actually only really effective protection against very heavy weapons, like those high speed kilometers long turbolaser bolts seen in the background of ESB.

[Simon_Jester]

Armor probably won't do much good against big weapon hits (especially if we still use high-end figures for Star Wars firepower), but slabbing a lot of armor on a vehicle or starship helps ensure that it won't just get smashed to pieces as soon as the shields fail. It probably also helps a lot with ground vehicles that have to worry about being hosed down with an E-Web or equivalent weapon.

[Adam Reynolds]

But they didn't do that at Hoth.

My idea there was that it was unnecessary because the shield seam in that case was at ground level. For a encompassing planetary shield, the seams would have to be in space. Though in any case, looking at the movie again, Reyvan is correct regardless.

As for armor, it is likely mostly intended as a defense against fighters, as well as a minor backup to main shields. This would serve as a supplement to things like bridge shields, which serve to protect vital systems underneath the primary shield.

This indicates why Executor was worried about losing their bridge shields and fighter attack but not the Mon Cal fleet that was within firing range. It also fits the fighter attack against Malvolence, in which they were concerned about attacking bridge shields but had a relatively easy time hitting the armored and thus likely unshielded main gun. This was assuming they were already flying under the primary outer shield that would protect against opposing capital ships.

[Galvatron]

Okay, then what about the Death Star 2's shield? If it had seams, the rebels sure didn't know about them. The entire shield had to come down before even the fighters could commence their attack.

I assume it was simply a smaller version of a strong, encompassing planetary shield.

[Enigma]

Wouldn't Torpedo Spheres be useful to down a planetary shield?

[Galvatron]

Wouldn't Torpedo Spheres be useful to down a planetary shield?

Do they even exist in the new canon? And how do they handle retaliatory fire from surface artillery? See, it's not just the shield that an invading fleet has to worry about...

[Enigma]

Wouldn't Torpedo Spheres be useful to down a planetary shield?

Do they even exist in the new canon? And how do they handle retaliatory fire from surface artillery? See, it's not just the shield that an invading fleet has to worry about...

It falls under "Legends".

Here is what wookiepedia has for it.

Torpedo Sphere
Production information
Manufacturer
Loronar Defense Industries
Class
Dedicated siege platform
Cost
Not available for sale; 327,830,000 credits (construction cost)
Technical specifications
Length
1,900 meters
Maximum atmospheric speed
930 kmh
Engine unit(s)
Sublight Drive
Hyperdrive rating
Class 3
Class 18 (back-up)
Shielding
Loronar Corporation DS-13 projectors
Sensor systems
Dedicated energy receptors
Navigation system
Sienar Fleet Systems navigation computer
Armament
10 turbolaser batteries
500 proton torpedo tubes
Complement
Lambda-class T-4a shuttles
MT/191 drop-ships
Crew
61,245; 2,030 gunners
Minimum crew
20,415
Passengers
8,540 (troops)
Cargo capacity
3.8 million metric tons
Consumables
4 years

Usage
Role
Planetary bombardment
Era(s)
Rise of the Empire era
Rebellion era
New Republic era
Affiliation
Galactic Empire

[Sea Skimmer]

As I recall the old WEG also said they operated in groups of six, all of them targeting the same shield generator from different angles, after doing a detailed long range scan to search for even the slightest weaknesses in the field. That strategy makes an awful lot of sense no matter how the shields work.

I don't think they ever tried to say how this would hold up to capital scale ground batteries, but it seems fair to presume that some dozens of major Imperial ships could simply swamp the defenses as cover for a short period, and also carry the landing forces to exploit the gap in the shield.

In more then a few ways Star Wars seems like it's 16th century galley warfare and the Death Star was merely the most absurdist 3000 rowing bank million pounder bombard armed super galley firing a single shot so big it can destroy an entire seaside castle!

[Galvatron]

Can't planetary shields be rotated deliberately to prevent an attacker from weakening any one segment with a sustained bombardment? Also, I seem to recall that Coruscant had multiple overlapping shields.

And how long do torpedo spheres take to bring down a shield? Wouldn't a prolonged siege leave them vulnerable to harassment by enemy fighters as well as air-to-space cannons?

[Elheru Aran]

That would depend on everything else you have going on. Torpedo spheres, in theory, could be used as a form of space-artillery; set them back a long way from the planet in question, tell your supporting craft to avoid crossing a certain section of space, and simply fire torpedoes down that section for as long as it takes while the supporting craft keep the rest of the planetary defenses busy.

IIRC, on Hoth they synchronized firing the ion cannon with opening the shield to let transports and fighters out. I suspect that if they tried that against a torpedo-sphere, they might kill the torpedo sphere, but if it was continually bombarding the section of shield that was opened, the torpedoes that it fired at the same time they opened the section to fire back would get through, and that would be a Bad Thing depending on what they hit.

[Galvatron]

I can't help but wonder how much thought WEG put into these torpedo spheres. Did they take into account the possibility of a defending force possessing anti-missile defenses capable of shooting down their torpedoes?

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly I'm not sure any Star Wars authors or content creators have ever seriously embraced the idea of massed antimissile fire being effective as a counter to large scale missile attack.

And given how tiny and fast proton torpedoes are, I don't think they're wrong to think that way. Shooting down proton torpedoes should be extremely hard. Especially if you're trying to fire out through a shield bubble that needs to stay up, since there are plenty of indications that you have to open gaps in theater/planetary shielding if you want to fire your own heavy surface emplacements.

[Galvatron]

How fast are they supposed to be? The ones used against the Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ didn't strike me as being very fast since we could easily follow them with our eyes.

[Patroklos]

Given the size of a Torpedo sphere, remember it is broadly spheroid so its internal volume will far exceed warships with similar official lengths, it should be able to shield itself as strongly as any other major warship. I doubt its defenseless against planetary counter battery fire.

If they really do operate in groups of six lowering the shields to shoot it might be suicidal not from a constant stream of torpedoes from the targeted sphere, but rather whatever the other five paying very close attention to the planetary shield in question might do. That might in fact be the game, planets trading ground batteries and generator sites and the Imperial Navy trading a torpedo sphere or two to spoil the other sides siege lines.

Also, it says it has proton torpedo tubes, which may not mean it is shooting actual proton torpedoes through them. Or at least not your standard one. They may be able to shoot any number of similar sized munitions from those tubes if they are similar in profile to a proton torpedo. Think VLS.The effectiveness of the platform may not be the physical properties of the vessel itself but rather the munitions it is using in conjunction with the specialized sensors stated to be onboard.

[Simon_Jester]

How fast are they supposed to be? The ones used against the Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ didn't strike me as being very fast since we could easily follow them with our eyes.

Hm. Fair point.

They apparently have some kind of ridiculous acceleration to do sharp right-angle turns, though- which indicates either very high thrust or non-Newtonian motion. Either way they may not be 'fast' in the sense of high velocity but they would be extremely agile. It wouldn't be hard to preprogram them to 'jink' enough to be extremely difficult targets for point defense fire.

[Galvatron]

How fast are they supposed to be? The ones used against the Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ didn't strike me as being very fast since we could easily follow them with our eyes.

Hm. Fair point.

They apparently have some kind of ridiculous acceleration to do sharp right-angle turns, though- which indicates either very high thrust or non-Newtonian motion. Either way they may not be 'fast' in the sense of high velocity but they would be extremely agile. It wouldn't be hard to preprogram them to 'jink' enough to be extremely difficult targets for point defense fire.

If that's the case, you'd think that the separatist droid fighters would have had similar programming and would have been far more difficult to shoot down than the prequels and TCW showed them to be.

I guess what I'm getting at is that planetary sieges should be a lot more complicated and costly for the Empire than just sending in a few torpedo spheres and assuming they'll bring down a shield without too much difficulty. I have this pet obsession with justifying why the Death Star was a vital strategic weapon for the Empire.

[Elfdart]

Because I haven't come up with a poorly supported theory in a while:

Largely drawing upon the fairly well known Brian Young theory that deflector shields are permeable to certain attacks as a result of their slow speed, I was wondering if there is a way to break through planetary shields without destroying them entirely.

Based on the visual way we see theater shields working, in which shields are permeable at the point of ground contact, in which whatever is penetrating the shields in effect appears as part of the ground, I wonder if shields in space work on a similar principle, but instead of appearing as part of the ground, the objective is instead to appear as part of the shield itself.

Also in TPM, we see the TF tanks fire upon the Gungan shield before sending in their droids, visibly weakening it. I wonder if the same effect is sometimes requires against shields in space as well, that when it is somewhat weaker it gives greater chances for fighters to fly through.

If that is the case, the same thing could apply to planetary shields. Instead of having enough firepower to drop them outright, you could instead penetrate those shields locally with landing craft.

This might explain what the bow mounted torpedo launchers on Venators and Acclamators are for. They are a means to deliver immediate firepower to an opposing planetary shield without drawing from the shields of the ship that are needed to defeat the system the way turbolasers would. Though it is also likely that as shields became more powerful during the war, they became ineffective, hence the ultimate need for the Death Star. But when it was destroyed, the Empire needed a stopgap solution.

Going back to Executor, it is interesting just how ineffective it is at Endor. While this is partially a result of the Emperor's orders, it could also be a result of Executor not actually being designed for fleet actions. What if its real purpose is to weaken shields enough that dropships can achieve local penetration? Its purpose as a command ship also fits this. The Blue Ridge class is an amphibious command ship.

My theory is that since objects moving at high velocity (shells, ships, blaster bolts) bounce off or crash and things moving slowly (battle droids, walkers) can wade through them, then slow movement either allows the attacker to pick their way through gaps in the shield (maybe by waiting for a naturally-occurring seam to open up OR the surface of the shield like the surface of a lake: walk in slowly and nothing happens; jump flat on your face and you'll hurt all over; BUT if you dive head first (or feet first) in the right place at the right time, you'll plunge right through the surface with no trouble.

So the use of walkers and foot soldiers to wade through the shield makes sense, as does the raised platform for the AT-AT's guns -which allow it to open fire at long distances. Sending fighters or bomber to try to slow down and wade through the shields opens them up to ground fire from any forces inside the shield, who now have very slow targets with no armor.

[Solauren]

Equip a few high yield warheads with hyperdrives, and pull a 'Han Solo in Force Awakens', but aimed so they arrive under the shield, and over the generators traveling and near the speed of light.

They hit the generators, and drop them. Problem solved.

[Patroklos]

How fast are they supposed to be? The ones used against the Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ didn't strike me as being very fast since we could easily follow them with our eyes.

Hm. Fair point.

They apparently have some kind of ridiculous acceleration to do sharp right-angle turns, though- which indicates either very high thrust or non-Newtonian motion. Either way they may not be 'fast' in the sense of high velocity but they would be extremely agile. It wouldn't be hard to preprogram them to 'jink' enough to be extremely difficult targets for point defense fire.

If that's the case, you'd think that the separatist droid fighters would have had similar programming and would have been far more difficult to shoot down than the prequels and TCW showed them to be.

I guess what I'm getting at is that planetary sieges should be a lot more complicated and costly for the Empire than just sending in a few torpedo spheres and assuming they'll bring down a shield without too much difficulty. I have this pet obsession with justifying why the Death Star was a vital strategic weapon for the Empire.

Nothing we know about the torpedoe sphere tells us it can bring down ANY shield, or every shield in a usable time frame. I always took the DS to not be a solution to the random Hoth level shield, but rather whatever presumable more powerful shields the powerful core world's name and numbers were using. The torpedoe sphere is like you average siege gun, the DS is a Gustav.

Equip a few high yield warheads with hyperdrives, and pull a 'Han Solo in Force Awakens', but aimed so they arrive under the shield, and over the generators traveling and near the speed of light.

They hit the generators, and drop them. Problem solved.

Congrats, you put more thought into that seen than any movie writers, by which I mean more than two seconds.

[Batman]

Except the manuever was considered a 'you gotta be fucking kidding me' by everybody else and the Falcon wasn't moving anywhere' near' the speed of light when she realspaced under the shield.
And how do you know you can 'target' the generators through the shield, leave alone at FTL distances?

[Tribble]

Also, we don't know the status of the StarKiller base's shields, apart from the fact that they were raised. Was it at full power? Could the refresh rate be altered or eliminated when needed? They certainly weren't expecting anything remotely like the Falcon's stunt happening, and it's possible that they could have had countermeasures available if they knew beforehand.

Plus, IIRC Finn had to point out the weakness in the shield rather than everyone already knowing that shields can be breached at FTL speeds, so it's possible that the FTL weakness is specific to the StarKiller base and not planetary shields in general.

[Sea Skimmer]

I guess what I'm getting at is that planetary sieges should be a lot more complicated and costly for the Empire than just sending in a few torpedo spheres and assuming they'll bring down a shield without too much difficulty. I have this pet obsession with justifying why the Death Star was a vital strategic weapon for the Empire.

An unstoppable siege engine that no possible relief force can touch is pretty much enough reason. The Death Star is absurd, except, if you really could build it it would offer that capability, while a collection of smaller ships of equal power would at least be vulnerable to defeat in detail by a reasonable enemy fleet. I don't think you really need anything more complicated.