Sneaky missile tactics

I was pondering how effective a salvo of MDMs would be if it was hidden behind an initial salvo. I'm not entirely sure what the sensor shadow of a salvo of missiles would be, but if a force of podnoughts rolled 2 salvos worth of pods and volley-fired them with the first salvo programmed to go the whole distance under power but the second salvo is supposed to cut its own power a few seconds before the initial salvo reaches the enemy. The idea being that salvo #2 comes in on a ballistic course until the last second, when its drives light back up again for final approach maneuvers.

There are a few questions I have about it myself:
Can an MDM be launched, go to maximum acceleration, then cut its wedge and coast along on a ballistic trajectory for X minutes, and then have its drive be programmed to turn back on for the final approach?

Would such a tactic actually catch an enemy off guard? Or would they be able to see through the first volley of missiles and count the total launches and figure out what was happening?

How well can missiles be seen at a distance using radar if their impeller wedges aren't active?

Darman wrote:I was pondering how effective a salvo of MDMs would be if it was hidden behind an initial salvo. I'm not entirely sure what the sensor shadow of a salvo of missiles would be, but if a force of podnoughts rolled 2 salvos worth of pods and volley-fired them with the first salvo programmed to go the whole distance under power but the second salvo is supposed to cut its own power a few seconds before the initial salvo reaches the enemy. The idea being that salvo #2 comes in on a ballistic course until the last second, when its drives light back up again for final approach maneuvers.

There are a few questions I have about it myself:
Can an MDM be launched, go to maximum acceleration, then cut its wedge and coast along on a ballistic trajectory for X minutes, and then have its drive be programmed to turn back on for the final approach?

Would such a tactic actually catch an enemy off guard? Or would they be able to see through the first volley of missiles and count the total launches and figure out what was happening?

How well can missiles be seen at a distance using radar if their impeller wedges aren't active?

That's a really interesting question. I don't even grasp most of the technical details of Honorverse weaponry - the math makes my head hurt - but regarding "can an MDM be programmed to do X", I would be inclined to say yes, particularly now that Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker are picking each other's brains with rapturous glee at Bolthole.

I assume you're contemplating this for use against the SLN? In that case, it might work, especially if the CO of the opponent in question wasn't inclined to believe everything he'd heard about Alliance hardware and weapons systems.

And now I'll let the technoheads analyze the problem with, like, math and technology and stuff.

Darman wrote:I was pondering how effective a salvo of MDMs would be if it was hidden behind an initial salvo. I'm not entirely sure what the sensor shadow of a salvo of missiles would be, but if a force of podnoughts rolled 2 salvos worth of pods and volley-fired them with the first salvo programmed to go the whole distance under power but the second salvo is supposed to cut its own power a few seconds before the initial salvo reaches the enemy. The idea being that salvo #2 comes in on a ballistic course until the last second, when its drives light back up again for final approach maneuvers.

There are a few questions I have about it myself:
Can an MDM be launched, go to maximum acceleration, then cut its wedge and coast along on a ballistic trajectory for X minutes, and then have its drive be programmed to turn back on for the final approach?

Would such a tactic actually catch an enemy off guard? Or would they be able to see through the first volley of missiles and count the total launches and figure out what was happening?

How well can missiles be seen at a distance using radar if their impeller wedges aren't active?

I'm not going to bother with the math, because I don't know how to do that sort of stuff, but no, it probably wouldn't work, at least, not the way you think it's supposed to.

First off, pretty much every missile impeller drive that lights off at launch is detectable by the enemy, because of the gravitic array being able to detect the missile wedge. Some will probably be hidden, but not all that many. What this means is that the targets are going to be wondering what happened to half the salvo, probably deduce exactly what you're trying, and start changing course not more than 30 seconds after half the salvo disappears.

Second, once the drives for the following salvo get shut down per your thought, they continue at whatever velocity they were moving at when they drives were shut down, while the forward salvo will still continue to accelerate, moving them far ahead of the followers.

Third, because of the distances and accelerations involved, it usually takes upwards of several minutes for a salvo to reach its target under normal accel from all three drives, with no coast phase. However, the following salvo, since it's now coasting, will take *much* longer to reach firing range, because they are no longer accelerating. Depending on when you shut down the drive, it could take upwards of twice as long, or even longer, to get there - time where the target has an opportunity to change course.

Meanwhile, your coasting missiles *cannot* change course without lighting up the next drive (yeah, they *could* use the RCS thrusters, but I don't think they would be enough to get the missiles on a converging course and they're mainly supposed to be used for fine-tuning the targeting before the laserheads are released - there's not all that much RCS fuel in a missile). This also means that the tracking section of the target would have a pretty good idea of *when* those drives will come back up, because they would already have tracking info from the point where they shut down, and they also know that the missiles can't change course significantly while coasting.

There's just no way to get that second salvo close enough to the target to attack only a few seconds behind behind the first/forward salvo... not without lighting off the drive(s).

I think the easy answer is that anybody it would work against is not capable of effectively stopping MDM's in the first place.

MaxxQ wrote:There's just no way to get that second salvo close enough to the target to attack only a few seconds behind behind the first/forward salvo... not without lighting off the drive(s).

The timing would be tricky, but a half-salvo with a ballistic phase could be hidden by the impellers of a First salvo until shutdown and the come in a few seconds behind a third salvo.

However, with Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth, the tactic is probably not necessary for RMN ships.

Annachie wrote:I think the easy answer is that anybody it would work against is not capable of effectively stopping MDM's in the first place.

That too.

Weird Harold wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:There's just no way to get that second salvo close enough to the target to attack only a few seconds behind behind the first/forward salvo... not without lighting off the drive(s).

The timing would be tricky, but a half-salvo with a ballistic phase could be hidden by the impellers of a First salvo until shutdown and the come in a few seconds behind a third salvo.

However, with Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth, the tactic is probably not necessary for RMN ships.

Agreed, but I still think any reasonably competent navy would have zig-zag maneuvers as part of their approach, which would play merry hell with any kind of predictions as to where they would be when the coasters light up.

MaxxQ wrote:Agreed, but I still think any reasonably competent navy would have zig-zag maneuvers as part of their approach, which would play merry hell with any kind of predictions as to where they would be when the coasters light up.

I don't recall any explicit mention of zig-zag courses but that might be because such details re hidden by pre-planned evasion patterns.

For that matter, I haven't seem much effort expended on evasion in long-range missile duels either.

Weird Harold wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:Agreed, but I still think any reasonably competent navy would have zig-zag maneuvers as part of their approach, which would play merry hell with any kind of predictions as to where they would be when the coasters light up.

I don't recall any explicit mention of zig-zag courses but that might be because such details re hidden by pre-planned evasion patterns.

For that matter, I haven't seem much effort expended on evasion in long-range missile duels either.

Yeah... AFAIK, there's no explicit textev on that. I just figured it was such a basic thing that it didn't really bear mentioning, as well as being only mildly useful.

But in the case of trying to avoid coasting missiles, it might work a bit better... the first time.

Hi MaxxQ,

While we have textev the Apollo AI is hidden in the shadow of the rest of salvo, that's an 8-1 ratio, which makes it a rather poor tactic and a 50-50 ratio extremely unlikely to provide that shadow.

Again, its very, very unnecessary at the moment.

If a ship or fleet changed course upon a MDM launch, even the RMN/GSN at 6 km/sec acceleration would move less than 875,000 km in 9 minutes, while the final drive at maximum has a range or Delta/V of almost twice that, not counting its momentum.

We have textev of Apollo's using their last stage in Sprint mode when its too close and too late to launch CM's accurately, before getting into ECM etc, reducing the defenses to mainly the PDC's.

Since that straight powered range is 40.59 M km, it will be some time before the SLN will be able to respond in kind, as in not before they're all dust bunnies.

L

MaxxQ wrote:**quote="Weird Harold"**[quote="MaxxQ"]Agreed, but I still think any reasonably competent navy would have zig-zag maneuvers as part of their approach, which would play merry hell with any kind of predictions as to where they would be when the coasters light up.**quote**

I don't recall any explicit mention of zig-zag courses but that might be because such details re hidden by pre-planned evasion patterns.

For that matter, I haven't seem much effort expended on evasion in long-range missile duels either.

Yeah... AFAIK, there's no explicit textev on that. I just figured it was such a basic thing that it didn't really bear mentioning, as well as being only mildly useful.

But in the case of trying to avoid coasting missiles, it might work a bit better... the first time.[/quote]

MaxxQ wrote:Agreed, but I still think any reasonably competent navy would have zig-zag maneuvers as part of their approach, which would play merry hell with any kind of predictions as to where they would be when the coasters light up.

Weird Harold wrote:I don't recall any explicit mention of zig-zag courses but that might be because such details re hidden by pre-planned evasion patterns.

For that matter, I haven't seem much effort expended on evasion in long-range missile duels either.

MaxxQ wrote:Yeah... AFAIK, there's no explicit textev on that. I just figured it was such a basic thing that it didn't really bear mentioning, as well as being only mildly useful.

But in the case of trying to avoid coasting missiles, it might work a bit better... the first time.

The only time I recall any mention in textev of deliberate course changes to avoid missiles was at 1st Manticore, but that was when Chin thought 8th Fleet had launched them on a ballistic course due to the range.

But I agree, it is such a common tactic it doesn't get mentioned.