Why don't we just nuke 'em?

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Nuclear power and its use against the Phasmid threat
by Wing Commander Marcello "Stella" Smith (ret).

It has been exactly twelve years, two months and fifteen days since the formal declaration of hostilities by the UDF against the extraterrestrial forces in response to the attack on the former location of the Pluto scientific outpost. There have been many questions by the public about the weapons we use against these terrible enemies of humanity, and I would like to set the record straight on some of them.

Specifically, I will answer one of the most common demands by people who are as angry as they are exhausted - "why don't we just nuke the bastards?"

I begin by saying that after thirty years of service in the UDF and sending home more black-clad coffins than I care to remember, I am entirely in favor of doing just that. There is absolutely nothing in the galaxy I would like better to do than confirm a valid order by UDF Command to launch a restricted weapon, turn my authorization key, and watch these monsters burn in nuclear fire as my crew cheered.

The first barrier to this scenario is that we usually don't have a worthy target.

It is well-known that Phasmids are as uninventive as they are tenacious, but since the Twenty-Second Battle of Mars their battle doctrine has shifted to launching mixed groups of independent fightercraft which execute micro-jumps from a mothership stationed far away from the actual combat zone. A typical ‘swarm' usually consists of Stinger- and Fang-class fighters, Ravager-class gunships, and Medusa-class interceptors, with Intruder-class boarding pods included when attacking our cruisers or installations.

While Phasmids may certainly deploy more or fewer ships in any given encounter, the largest typical craft encountered are the Ruiner-class heavy fighters. They've also learned from the early conflicts near the lunar colony to avoid clustering in more than four to six craft, when small surface-to-space tactical nukes wiped out entire fighter wings at a time. To date the the first Marauder-class assault carriers are the only capital ships that Phasmids operate besides the tentatively designated Interloper-class frigate.

Nobody would pass up a chance to nuke an Interloper, but scrambling a nuclear- armed ship to within range of one has rarely been accomplished and the task is vastly more difficult with Marauders. These are ships highly valued by the enemy, fiercely defended, have excellent countermeasures  and are surprisingly agile for a vessel their size. To date Lieutenant Lucas "Starjumper" is the only UDF pilot to have destroyed one with a fighter, by making an incredible shot that landed a pair of "Sledgehammer" nuclear-tipped rockets in the Marauder's hangar bay.

The second major problem facing our nuclear ordinance teams is the limited supply of fissile material. Obviously, a nuclear weapon can only be used once, and every atomic bomb we throw at the Phasmids is that much less plutonium we can use to keep the lights on at one of our ore refineries, colonies or outposts. Atomic power is the only viable way for the UDF to keep the wolves from the door. Even in civilian extrasolar applications, viable sources of energy are exceptionally scarce and solar panels are wholly inadequate to do more than power a very small installation.

Thirdly, nuclear ordinance creates a massive security and logistics challenge. Phasmids have not specifically attempted theft of special weapons thus far, but this is still a concern as a single "Empty Quiver" event by alien or human elements could result in catastrophic consequences for the UDF. There are additional security requirements to fabricate, move and store them which creates a conflict of scarce resources. Every soldier required to guard a nuclear weapon is one less weapons officer aboard a cruiser, every heavily-guarded munitions freighter is one less shipment of critical supplies. The utility of such ordinance thus creates a serious problem for UDF logistics.

There is some small comfort here in the fact that if the Phasmids were merely interested in causing as much destruction as physically possible, they would just have started sending waves of fighters on kamikaze missions to UDF installations and our colonies. The idea of one of their Motherships doing such a suicide dive toward a major Earth city is one of UDF Commands' worst nightmares.

Fourth is the problem of radioactive contamination. As the war continues without an end in sight, the number and size of debris fields composed of UDF and Phasmid ships are increasing. There have already been several incidents of irradiated debris raining down on planetary installations although thankfully none have yet resulted in fatalities. The more nukes we throw around means more danger from ‘hot' wreckage strewn about our solar system. This has a wide range of consequences aside from the obvious health hazard to sensor interference and creating a pre-existing hazard that needs to be cleared for the construction of new facilities on planetary bodies.

The fifth and final limitation we face is the need to strike at actual Phasmid infrastructure. We have shot down tens of thousands of their ships already and will probably shoot down tens of  thousands more before this conflict is ended. Until we can locate their shipyards or refineries or their home planets we gain only a temporary reprieve at best by using nuclear weapons. We must therefore make sure to conserve some of  our strongest ‘bullets' for when we have an opportunity to hunt bigger game.

Please know that I have the deepest sympathy for the friends and family of all who serve in the UDF, especially those who have lost a loved one in the fight against these invaders. We are all as tired of this conflict as you are, sick of rationing and dealing with the many mental stresses that come with years of frontline combat. Our Xenoresearch teams are doing their absolute best to back-engineer their technology to come up with more effective ships and weapons. Even if we ourselves do not live to see that marvelous day when humanity is victorious, rest assured that the day will come when the last Phasmid ship is destroyed and Condition White is declared all across human space.

Terra Firma.

Addendum by proofreader: Several weeks after the publication of this document, an unknown vessel was detected leaving planetary orbit at high velocity on extrasolar radar screens at the Martian spaceport New Washington. After an initial investigation into the craft's origin, Mars Civil Police officers entering Ms. Smith's personal quarters found a large array of spacecraft tools and spare parts along with blueprints for a highly modified civilian freighter stored in her designated ground vehicle garage.
The vessel, designated "UDF Vengeance" on the recovered blueprints, appeared to have been given three times the normal engine propulsion for a freighter and fitted with a redesigned cargo bay. Together with packaging labels for an undisclosed amount of C-6 explosives, the freighter's new configuration, according to MCP officer and former station crewman Adam Buckley, now amounted to a self-propelled shaped charge. High command was notified of a potential rogue vessel in the area.

A few solar days later UDF Iron Fist responded to a wide-band broadcast from an unidentified source requesting the coordinates of any large Phasmid vessel in the area, advising to avoid the Ceres asteroid belt at all costs. Without answering repeated hails, a spacecraft matching the description of the rogue vessel was witnessed by pursuing UDF fighters to deliberately ram itself into the reactor area of a Phasmid mothership loitering outside a jump point, bypassing its energy shields entirely. The now-defenseless mothership was subsequently boarded by UDF Marine forces to recover alien artifacts before being scuttled by cruiser gunfire.
W.C. Smith has been posthumously awarded the Order of Sol.

Notes:
This work of fiction is partly inspired by the book "Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima", particularly the section on accidents that occurred to nuclear weapons in the custody of the United States' armed forces. I was intrigued by the additional potential for accidents when an armed force had expanded to cover an entire solar system and applied it to the universe of Space Crew, which I've been enjoying after picking it up on a Steam sale.

If you liked this story I encourage you to support the developers, buy the game, and have fun blasting aliens in three dimensions.