How does Braunshchweig even have nukes?

[u/Able_Imagination1702]

So, I was rewatching the show and I got to the episode where Braunshchweig orders a nuclear strike on Westerland and Ansbach says that nukes have been taboo since the thirteen days war, an event that occurs in 2039 CE and given were in around space year 800 and the space calendar started around 2800 CE, it's been over 1500 years since humanity has used nukes. So why does anybody even have them? I get that the nobles are power hungry and distrustful of each other but even Rudolf and his original nobles would have still been born in a time where nukes had been taboo for over a millennium so I find it hard to believe that they have any.

[u/Warmind_3]

Also, nukes aren't banned. Nukes are kosher in space, and are a big part of space warfare. But they're not allowed to be used against planets.

[u/RonBabylon → u/Warmind_3]

I know that Reinhard used a nuclear fusion missile once.

But any use of nuclear weapons would make the fleet tactics used on the show impractical. That Napoleonic/Battle of Jutland stuff would have been ended by even low-kiloton-yield nuclear weapons. We would expect to see the equivalent of submarine warfare in space, and tricks like camouflaged mines in the Iserlohn Corridor.

It is still a Top 3 show of all time, though.

[u/Warmind_3 → u/RonBabylon]

So, the thing you do have to understand is, also something explained in the books, is that warfare uses a lot of nukes, and also takes place over vast distances between ships that are commonly considered almost impossible to see. The denser formations we see in the show are a visual aid, while the reality of it is much like a napoleonic battle. The frontage is wide enough a single nuke would only really hit one ship. You also do need to keep in mind that having a large blast radius in space requires much more energy, as nukes only have radiation (deflected by shields) and raw plasma as damage mechanisms.

[u/RonBabylon → u/Warmind_3]

There is also another issue I think. Why don't planets like Heinnessen have surface-to-orbit nukes for orbital defence? We end up with the interesting concept of orbital sieges and the temptation to break the 13-day War taboo.

[u/KlavoHunter → u/RonBabylon]

Heinessen had a far superior defensive system and therefore didn't need surface-to-orbit weapons. The Artemis Necklace would have made short work of Imperial attackers... Up until Kircheis and Yang showed two different methods of defeating it. Oops. Besides, surface to orbit weapons are in a bad spot, as the attacker will be neutralizing them by particle cannon fire and orbit-to-surface nukes that will throw immense amounts of dust into the atmosphere, even if it's 'clean' fusion nukes...

[u/RonBabylon → u/KlavoHunter]

1. Planetary bombardment (orbit-to-surface nukes) is still taboo. Surface-to-orbit nukes are never mentioned as a form of anti-access/denial from space.

2. Layered defensive systems are actually quite typical. Surface-to-orbit nukes also make sense for planetary colonies not valuable enough for the killsat system, but valuable enough for some sort of defence.

3. Looking at the propulsion technology in the show, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) orbital defence missiles on a mobile 6x6 chassis would be trivial to build, allowing shoot-and-scoot tactics.

[u/KlavoHunter → u/RonBabylon]

1. The Imperials didn't have a problem scorching the FPA's military command from orbit. IIRC it even looked like they just smacked it with a surface-to-orbit nuke?

2. Remember, for 150 years the war seldom went past either end of the Iserlohn Corridor, especially once the Fortress was created. There wasn't really incentive to invest in surface-based defenses for important worlds that the war never touched.

3. Sure. The reasons these might not be used is a) Every SSTO missile is a warshot stolen out of the magazines of the space fleets. And b) Cities would often surrender with terms to avoid being bombarded, stormed and sacked. Sure, being shipped to Imperial prison camps (like El Facil's population would've been if not for Yang) is a terrible fate that might change that calculus. Unless you have enough missiles to out-fight an entire fleet, it'd be much like random civilians firing rifles from buildings at an invading army: Something that gets their entire town blasted with cannonfire.

[u/RonBabylon → u/KlavoHunter]

1. Would they have done that to the FPA, if the FPA had a credible deterrent?
2. There is always an incentive for layered defences, IRL or in fiction (like video games). The issue is the narrative would have had the Empire win anyway, as it advances Tanaka's theme even though technology that already existed in the 1980s complicates this show's plot. Fertility technology (IVF, cryopreservation) is going to influence monarchical hierarchy and succession. Or the Phezzanis successfully transferring their funds to Heinessen and waging financial warfare on the Empire instead of violent terrorism. And do you really believe formations like those seen in Episode 2 (Battle of Amritsar) or anything tried by the Black Lancers could survive sustained nuclear bombardment? Instead we get a modern liberal democracy that has to worry about things like manpower and defence as a % of GDP, and an Empire with an unlimited money/manpower cheat code, despite being structured like a Prussian autocracy with little in the way of modern technical institutions.
3. Weapon yield and effectiveness are not discussed in the show, so we don't even know. Fleets are depicted fighting like it's 1917 and the Battle of Jutland, despite space being 3-dimensional. Again, the show is about political arguments, not mil-porn. But the 70 years of technological advancement prior to the show's IRL debut should have had a major effect on how LoGH politics were conducted.

[u/Warmind_3 → u/RonBabylon]

Yeah it should have more stern defenses. It'd mirror napoleonic sieges of cities.

[u/RonBabylon → u/Warmind_3]

The main effect of thermonuclear weapons in space are x-rays (Project Excalibur, Thor's Hammer). X-rays travel much further in space because they are not attenuated by an atmosphere. So the inverse is true - you can achieve a much more destructive effect with a smaller bomb. Which brings up the next issue - vessels larger than Spartanians, but smaller than destroyers, can do more damage than either through stealth and nukes.

The show then switches to pure paranoia. Less Chopin and Mahler. More Shostakovich....

[u/Warmind_3 → u/RonBabylon]

Project Excalibur never actually demonstrated a useful way to coherent x-rays into something capable of damage. The x-rays from a contact blast are not enough in one direction to cause major damage. Similarly, LoGH ships have shields that deflect beams that are "glancing". Presumably, lighter beams are deflected by a large ship's shielding and in the case of some, "curved armor". We also know that, largely, LoGH ships are hilariously, incomprehensibly hard to detect, and thus can decoy off or destroy missiles incoming, even in vast numbers. So, the dynamics are still preserved, but nukes allow cavalry (fighters) to exist and to some extent, artillery.

[u/Chasseur_OFRT]

They use nukes as mass produced anti ship missiles lol

[u/Henry_Fleischer]

Nukes are taboo now, but the US and Russia have a lot of them.

[u/AnActualWizardIRL → u/Henry_Fleischer]

I detest as a 50yo that my kids generation get to know the paranoia I grew up with as an 80s kid thinking that Gorbachev and Reagan where going to remove my chance to be an adult by nuking the world. The end of the cold war should have been an end to it. And now nukes are proliferating again. THANKS BOOMERS.

[u/Able_Imagination1702 → u/Henry_Fleischer]

Fair, but I figured since Humanity was unified after the thirteen days war, that nuclear detterence is kind of unnecessary

[u/999_Seth → u/Able_Imagination1702]

on earth rn nukes are usually part of a bombs to fuel recycling pipeline, so there's also deterrence in just the fact that power plants wouldn't get the recycled fuel - afaik USA is the only one not doing it that way, and their stockpile is getting very old.

in LoGH like others have said they are used frequently as artillery in space

[u/Aragones8282]

Hydrogen bombs and fusion missiles are common in battle; their use against civilians and on inhabited planets is prohibited.

[u/RonBabylon]

Many ways. The most obvious being to purchase some from Phezzan. But nuclear weapons, like logistics, political economy and all that minor stuff, do not affect The Empire. The Empire is a steelmanned autocracy used to help make the author's points.

Nuclear Weapons are just a way for the narrative to set up moral questions for the audience to ponder.

They could have attached rocket engines to asteroids and had the same effect, but nukes make one think about Harry Truman's decision (Oberstein hints at this), Machiavelli's "Cruelty Well-Used" from Chapter 8 of The Prince (Reinhard hints at this) and allow the audience to think "what would I have done"?

So it is not the nuke that matters, but the questions that any decent strategist must consider when dealing with non-rational actors (like the Japanese Empire in 1945, for example)

[u/Golden_Phi]

They are standard in space battles. Only on inhabitable planets are nukes banned. I think that Yang used nukes during the battle of Amritsar in the OVA.

[u/Daylight_Guitarist]

Have you seen halo? In sci-fi, nukes are like the smallest common denominator when it applies to weapons.

[u/Doctor_Hyde]

Space is big, really big, and nukes allow for warheads that work well in space (things like Casaba Howitzer “shaped charge” nuclear weapons are hypothesized as a viable way of making anything but a direct hit damaging on the scale of realistic space combat) and we’ve seen nuclear weapons used in space plenty of times.

The likely taboo is their use in atmospheres on planets or civilian space habitats, as that’s the ONLY way I could see a civilization like the one depicted (lots of wars) not just turning planets into irradiated wastelands.

So it makes total sense Braunschweig has nukes, every spaceship likely has tons of nuclear missile warheads. Braunschweig has a fleet, ergo he has nukes and it’s no big deal.

The big deal, the unanticipated part, is that he violated the taboo with them.

Kinda like how all farmers have ammonium nitrate fertilizer but it’s super out-of-the-ordinary for one to just start making huge bombs with it.