OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

You have to wonder about a "demonstration" that had missiles that essentially already overflown their targets (and presumably the wedges that would have defended said targets) and then spun and (having ejected their lasing rods) fired the warheads.
You don't really want to have your missiles firing into the wedge since that is going to be futile. But IF your missile's sensors can "see" the wedge (which it is also managing to avoid) and gets "behind the wedge, it SHOULD be able to 1) flip and deploy it's lasing rods "back" at the target then 3) fire the warhead and be sending the focused energy at the backside of the target.

Unless this hasn't been done before (or nobody every tried to do it) then the ships you were attacking is still going to have to use it's CM and PDLC to also fire at enemy missiles which are still IN THE MISSILES OWN ENGAGEMENT ENVELOPES and shoot you in the ass. They may be screaming way from your backside but a laser head hit from a weapon heading away from you is still going to do serious damage if it is within it's engagement range when it ignites the warhead.

And so you now have to further spread your sensor and CM/PDLC controls to intercept missiles who have nominally "missed" you. Parthian Shot indeed.

Loren Pechtel wrote:About that. The number of incoming birds has little to do with how many get picked off. If anything more birds mean more EW jamming and fewer birds picked off.

Are you saying fewer in total number or fewer as a percentage of the total? I would expect the total number destroyed will increase as the number of missiles increases, up to some point where the defense is saturated. Below that saturation point I expect the percentage destroyed to slowly decrease as the number of missiles increases. Yes, there are more electronic counter measures, but there are also more missiles to shoot.

Brigade XO wrote:You have to wonder about a "demonstration" that had missiles that essentially already overflown their targets (and presumably the wedges that would have defended said targets) and then spun and (having ejected their lasing rods) fired the warheads.
You don't really want to have your missiles firing into the wedge since that is going to be futile. But IF your missile's sensors can "see" the wedge (which it is also managing to avoid) and gets "behind the wedge, it SHOULD be able to 1) flip and deploy it's lasing rods "back" at the target then 3) fire the warhead and be sending the focused energy at the backside of the target.

Unless this hasn't been done before (or nobody every tried to do it) then the ships you were attacking is still going to have to use it's CM and PDLC to also fire at enemy missiles which are still IN THE MISSILES OWN ENGAGEMENT ENVELOPES and shoot you in the ass. They may be screaming way from your backside but a laser head hit from a weapon heading away from you is still going to do serious damage if it is within it's engagement range when it ignites the warhead.

And so you now have to further spread your sensor and CM/PDLC controls to intercept missiles who have nominally "missed" you. Parthian Shot indeed.

We're talking about missiles moving at over 70% the speed of light. And the laserhead only has a 50,000 km standoff range.

If you overfly the wedge and want to fire backwards you've got less than a quarter second after passing the ship before you're out of range. How close would you need to skim to its wedge to achieve an angle past the wedge back to the ship with a slant range of <= 50,000 km?
Well, for an SD that'd be passing approximately 30,000 km above/below the wedge (because the wedge slopes the critical angle varies depending on whether you're passing even with the ship, somewhat ahead of it or somewhat astern of it - I used 'even with').

And given the tiny time the missile accelerate is almost irrelevant; you're not going to be curving behind the wedge because in 0.25 seconds your 46,000 g accel is only able to displace you laterally by 14 km.


So not impossible to overfly a ship and fire back at it. But you'd have to set up that approach a long way back to ensure you were on a vector that let you see the ship to make that snap over the shoulder shot before you were back out of laserhead range. And you'd need to pass all the way through its CM zone on the way in - even if you found a vector that used your own wedge to protect you from its PDLCs until you'd overflown it.
(And even then, its PDLCs might kill you as you tried to make the over the shoulder shot -- just like we've seen them sometimes successfully engage missiles just clearing the lip of the wedge when the ship had rolled behind its wedge against the strike.

Jonathan_S wrote:But with Apollo you're much less likely to lose sight or get decoyed away in the first place (better sensors plus being able to use all 9 Mk23's sensors as a sparse array makes it harder to blind and gives it a better chance of at least one of them keeping the original target in sight the whole time). And when Apollo does get a lost target lock the FTL link is fast enough the launching ship often has enough time to make an intelligent new target choice for that pod's worth of missiles and upload it back to them. Also, when the launch ship can't the 23E has a far more capable computer to go with its far better sensor picture and so should have a better chance of autonomously reacquiring its original target. Plus it can talk laterally to other 23Es in its salvo, so one of them might be able to cue it back onto its original target; and for any 23Es that still can't find their original target and can't get a new one from the launching ship, they can look for the best targets anybody can see while still avoiding over-focusing by "calling dibs" and letting their siblings know so the swarm can, even autonomously, do a pretty good job of maintaining the desired fire distribution.

Another advantage might be that they can coordinate amongst themselves so some groupings of missiles are ahead of the others and therefore the front ones' wedges shield the back ones from view. This is exactly what Travis did against the Volsungs, albeit with only two pairs of missiles (the front pair shielding the back one). It's less likely to be effective against a large grouping of target ships in a wall, which would have lateral and altitude separation between themselves, and thus may be able to see above, below, or to the sides of the shielding wedges.

Or you can do a barricade. The first group of missiles turns completely turtle and present their wedges full-on to the targets; the second group follows behind those, with their positions hidden by the wedge, but obviously not accelerating; a third group consisting mostly of ACMs flies much further back and feeds telemetry so the front two groups can know where they're going. Not sure this is very useful because the separation can't be too great (gives too much time to the defenders) or too small (risk of one CM taking out multiple missiles), and curtails the ability to evade.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But with Apollo you're much less likely to lose sight or get decoyed away in the first place (better sensors plus being able to use all 9 Mk23's sensors as a sparse array makes it harder to blind and gives it a better chance of at least one of them keeping the original target in sight the whole time). And when Apollo does get a lost target lock the FTL link is fast enough the launching ship often has enough time to make an intelligent new target choice for that pod's worth of missiles and upload it back to them. Also, when the launch ship can't the 23E has a far more capable computer to go with its far better sensor picture and so should have a better chance of autonomously reacquiring its original target. Plus it can talk laterally to other 23Es in its salvo, so one of them might be able to cue it back onto its original target; and for any 23Es that still can't find their original target and can't get a new one from the launching ship, they can look for the best targets anybody can see while still avoiding over-focusing by "calling dibs" and letting their siblings know so the swarm can, even autonomously, do a pretty good job of maintaining the desired fire distribution.

Another advantage might be that they can coordinate amongst themselves so some groupings of missiles are ahead of the others and therefore the front ones' wedges shield the back ones from view. This is exactly what Travis did against the Volsungs, albeit with only two pairs of missiles (the front pair shielding the back one). It's less likely to be effective against a large grouping of target ships in a wall, which would have lateral and altitude separation between themselves, and thus may be able to see above, below, or to the sides of the shielding wedges.

Or you can do a barricade. The first group of missiles turns completely turtle and present their wedges full-on to the targets; the second group follows behind those, with their positions hidden by the wedge, but obviously not accelerating; a third group consisting mostly of ACMs flies much further back and feeds telemetry so the front two groups can know where they're going. Not sure this is very useful because the separation can't be too great (gives too much time to the defenders) or too small (risk of one CM taking out multiple missiles), and curtails the ability to evade.

Barricade does not work like that. Missile wedges are full power or 1/2 power all the time, pitching the wedge to cover the missile (turning turtle) changes the missile trajectory rocketing your missile off in that direction. Doing that would only protect a follow on missile for a few fractions of a sec, before the front missiles had produced sufficient side velocity to expose the trailers.

Barricade used the wedges in their normal position to hit unpowered missiles.

Ships, unlike missiles, can run a wedge with practically zero acceleration, so they can hide behind their wedge without changing their vector.

Theemile wrote:
Barricade used the wedges in their normal position to hit unpowered missiles.

Along with a whole lot of hits from the plot hammer.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Barricade used the wedges in their normal position to hit unpowered missiles.

Along with a whole lot of hits from the plot hammer.

It's just a given that Plot-tonium was used as the fuel.

Theemile wrote:Barricade does not work like that. Missile wedges are full power or 1/2 power all the time, pitching the wedge to cover the missile (turning turtle) changes the missile trajectory rocketing your missile off in that direction. Doing that would only protect a follow on missile for a few fractions of a sec, before the front missiles had produced sufficient side velocity to expose the trailers.

Barricade used the wedges in their normal position to hit unpowered missiles.

Ships, unlike missiles, can run a wedge with practically zero acceleration, so they can hide behind their wedge without changing their vector.

Wait, what? Why can't a missile have zero acceleration while the wedge is up? They can step down their accelerations a little so missiles of different generations can fly in formation, so why not step down to zero?

I'm not asking for this to add time to the wedge's clock. Once it's going, it's going.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:In essence, it is the link that makes them deadly; an Achilles' heel that will assert itself if the link can be cut very close to launch. That means the MK23-E has to lead its brood from beginning to end, with absolutely no update whatsoever.

And if the missiles need an additional signal immediately after launch for some reason, well, then an entire launch could be rendered useless.

Then please explain what happened to the Solarian Fleet at Beowulf in UH; where only about ten percent of their Battle-cruisers survived an Apollo attack, which had received initial instructions and then acted autonomously. Obviously they did not need "an additional signal immediately after launch"; so it seems that they can be deadly without that link.

I am in need of a reread of that passage. My immediate questions are regarding the range of the entire launch, and at what point in the launch was Mycroft destroyed?

Perhaps my basic knowledge is in error, but I am under the impression that a missile has to be guided to its target most of the way. Even Apollo missiles are not tracking straight out of the gate. I am sure there must be a certain range before missiles start tracking; the point where they become locked on.

In summary, any launch whose links are cut immediately after launch shouldn't be able to find their arse from a hole in the ground. Especially against a maneuvering fleet.


****** *

Loren Pectel wrote:

cthia wrote:-snip-

Reminds me of the movie Hunt for Red October when the missiles from the Russian sub closed too quickly to arm.

Consider the wet navy subs--yes, the torpedo isn't armed until it's gone far enough that a detonation will not harm the unit that launched it. However, the torpedo will carry out the orders it was given even if the link is cut--and the link is pretty fragile. You need to carry many miles of wire, it's got to be a very thin wire!

That torpedo fired at the Red October was not armed--but it was tracking.

Do pardon my bold.

Agreed. However, the missile in a wet navy sub is locked on from the moment of launch. An HV missile is not locked on from the moment it is fired. It is being guided. An HV missile continues to need guidance until the sensors of the missiles are in range of the targets.

I don't see how those links can survive being cut early, especially when maneuvering targets are fully aware that the missiles are flying blind, and when they began to fly blind.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Wait, what? Why can't a missile have zero acceleration while the wedge is up? They can step down their accelerations a little so missiles of different generations can fly in formation, so why not step down to zero?

I'm not asking for this to add time to the wedge's clock. Once it's going, it's going.

I assume you could set a missile's acceleration to zero; at least an RMN one. (Other navies are stated to have fixed acceleration steps; but the RMN a captain can select whatever they want even if it's not efficient).

However there's a big problem with that - a missile's acceleration can't be varied once the drive has lit off. Once you initiate the drive, whether at 0 gees, 46,000 gees, or 92,000 gees that's the accel you get until it burns out or your turn it off (which burns it out). And giving up 1 of your 3 MDM drive rings for a 0 gees shield would be bad enough; as it'd massively shorten the range of the missile; but there's worse news.

When I was speculating about mixed acceleration missile profile with DDM/MDMs RFC posted to say that (current) drives can't do that. The baffle does protect the not yet used rings from being destroyed by the active one -- but in some way it's not perfect and activating the first drive "burns in" the other two so they'll now only work at that acceleration. So it seems the only way to get a 0 gees acceleration on a missile is if you dial all its drives to 0 gees -- and now it'd just drifting away from your ship as whatever velocity it's launch tube or pod imparted.

(Note: Cataphracts are an exception to that "all drive the same" because they use some other method of shielding the upper stage's CM derived drive from the lower stage's normal missile drive. That's why after staging their 2nd stage can accelerate quicker. That also implies that you could use a Cataphract as a 0 gees shield. Though as soon as the trailing missiles brought their drives online they'd whip past the shield and be exposed again)