I occurred to me that there is one way a stealthy attack in space might
work (at least once). It would depend on a lot of misdirection, really
good security, and an inattentive, though not really incompetent victim.
The key is a mass driver, driven by a fission reactor, and the fact that
most of the viewpoints humans can reach easily are in or near the plane
of the ecliptic.
For example, suppose the First Marshen Republick launches an expedition
to visit various uninhabited asteroids, a-to-b-to-c-to-d. The carefully
selected crew (who all happen to have high security clearances and tight
lips) visit the asteroids and publish their papers and all is right with
the worlds. Ten years later, an unmapped giant asteroid wipes out the
Terran Pacific Rim with giant tsunamis and earthquakes, and severely
inconveniences the rest of the earth with several nuclear winters.
It just so happens, that this asteroid was one that the Republick's
survey visited. And that the Republick has a long-standing bone to pick
with Terra.
Mass drivers probably have the lowest radiated signature of any
propulsion system. If you keep a very well designed radiator panel
aligned parallel to the ecliptic (hard, when it's a few acres, but not
impossible), very few sensors will ever see it.
Now the whole deal can be queered if someone happens to look at the
asteroid during the initial movement. Whether they see the heat
signature, or the odd whatever signature that the mass drivers will
cause, the sight of an asteroid actively changing course surely gives
the game away. You have to do it when the asteroid is obscured by the
sun from your target, and from anyone else who might rat. You can
probably also only do this once.
Still, it is a stealthy attack in space. There should be some kind of
extra credit for that, other than the massive Terran space fleet that 20
years later non-stealthily nukes the Republick into near-extinction.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
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