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We'd also need major advancements in information communication. As it stands now it takes a long, long time for the light of distant sights to reach us. At only a few thousand kilometers this isn't such a big deal but when evading every second counts. The last thing we'd need is finding out we were shot at and COULD have evaded certain doom, if only we'd known about it 3 seconds earlier.
Basically, for space combat we're looking at so many much-needed technological advancements, we may as well just assume we have tech that's far more advanced than what's there now and not just "the next step up".
A novel I once read had an interresting idea where ships were discovered by sensors that carefully monitored wayward gasses/dust/miniscule gravitational effects on other nearby objects, etc etc etc. I liked the idea, as cumbersome as it was. And the calculations could be done to determine the mass of the object and tell if it was a stray-floating screw or a huge battleship. It was kinda like whatever martial art it is that teaches how to see everything around you by disturbances in the environment.
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