New Anti-Missile tactic

In Ashes, Honor used her roundabout's wedge to provide the Royal yacht an impenetrable if 'detached' sidewall.

Is it possible to launch a 'wall' of 'missiles' arranged in such a way that their generated wedges would form a wall perpendicular to the ship's wedges (of course, just outside the outer edge of the defending ship's wedge)and thus defeat the bomb pumped lasers from the incoming missiles?

I know such a wall would block telemetry links to the missiles launched by the ship but the wedges does not need to last a long while. And of course there's also the tethered keyhole platforms that can be placed 'beyond' the protective wall so as not to lose telemetry on one's own missiles.

This would simplify the problem of defending the ship. Instead of calculating each incoming missile's trajectory and plotting an intercept, the defending ship only has to time the "wedge wall's" activation.

No, they are too small and the range of laser heads too long. You could use a LAC, suggestions about this kind of defense have been studiously ignored by David Weber. Other then the incident in the story set way back when that Zahn is expanding on.

kzt wrote:No, they are too small and the range of laser heads too long. You could use a LAC, suggestions about this kind of defense have been studiously ignored by David Weber. Other then the incident in the story set way back when that Zahn is expanding on.

I don't see the problem with the range of the laser heads. You know when the missiles will reach the range where they can start using their laser heads and given their speed, up to how many seconds their laser heads are going to be a threat. You simply activate your defending missile wedges during that period.

As for the missiles' wedges being small, that's why I said a 'wall' of them. I don't know how much space there is between a warship's wedges, and I don't know the width of a missiles wedge, but I am sure that you can use several pieces of paper to cover a big window. You might just need a lot of pieces of paper.

If you will need a huge number of missiles for this, I'd geek. But if it's economical enough (less than what you usually use for intercepts), then it might be a good idea to find out if it can be done.

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I thought of using LAC wedges, but I don't think a warship wants to have that relatively big allied vessel blocking it's firing arc. If a defensive missile gets vaporized by it's ships next salvo's wedges, it's not really a problem. If it can't fire it's missiles because it has to wait for the LAC to clear the firing arc, then it is a problem.

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I'm also thinking of a tethered 'decoy' that would generate the perpendicular wedges but I don't know how far a 'tethered' object can be from the ship it is tethered to.

We routinely refer to this as "turtling up." As kzt said, missile would be a very bad choice for your shields. I could see, long term, a development of some sort of defensive drone, in addition to a keyhole type platform, that would provide this type of cover.

The biggest problem would be that a counter is rather easy. Instead of huge waves of missiles, you use large waves of missiles with a steady stream in between the waves. This way, when the enemy turtles up for the wave, they loose track of the stream. When the turtle comes down, they have very short to no tracking time on several missiles, regardless of when it comes down. This is a very expensive option, but I think it would be very effective.

crewdude48 wrote:We routinely refer to this as "turtling up." As kzt said, missile would be a very bad choice for your shields. I could see, long term, a development of some sort of defensive drone, in addition to a keyhole type platform, that would provide this type of cover.

The biggest problem would be that a counter is rather easy. Instead of huge waves of missiles, you use large waves of missiles with a steady stream in between the waves. This way, when the enemy turtles up for the wave, they loose track of the stream. When the turtle comes down, they have very short to no tracking time on several missiles, regardless of when it comes down. This is a very expensive option, but I think it would be very effective.

well, it would be a great tactic for a damaged ship to 'turtle up' while doing repairs.

Since you've mentioned the counter, then how about this, don't make the 'turtle' wedge perpendicular to the ships wedge. Angle it out so your own ship still has a slice of space it can use to fire its missiles. The enemy missile may now have a chance to get some hits in but it has to come from a very narrow slice of window and it still has to get past the sidewalls. and since it's fun making the enemy guess, change the angle from time to time. You can even have 2 'turtle wedge' generators, one above the roof and the other below the wedge and you switch between the two from time to time so make it much harder for your opponent to get into that open slice.

Rakhmamort wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:We routinely refer to this as "turtling up." As kzt said, missile would be a very bad choice for your shields. I could see, long term, a development of some sort of defensive drone, in addition to a keyhole type platform, that would provide this type of cover.

The biggest problem would be that a counter is rather easy. Instead of huge waves of missiles, you use large waves of missiles with a steady stream in between the waves. This way, when the enemy turtles up for the wave, they loose track of the stream. When the turtle comes down, they have very short to no tracking time on several missiles, regardless of when it comes down. This is a very expensive option, but I think it would be very effective.

well, it would be a great tactic for a damaged ship to 'turtle up' while doing repairs.

Since you've mentioned the counter, then how about this, don't make the 'turtle' wedge perpendicular to the ships wedge. Angle it out so your own ship still has a slice of space it can use to fire its missiles. The enemy missile may now have a chance to get some hits in but it has to come from a very narrow slice of window and it still has to get past the sidewalls. and since it's fun making the enemy guess, change the angle from time to time. You can even have 2 'turtle wedge' generators, one above the roof and the other below the wedge and you switch between the two from time to time so make it much harder for your opponent to get into that open slice.

1) Read the pearl's over on thefifthimperium.com There are several hundred of them

2) Read specifically the one on wedge geometry

3) Missile wedges were a given "10km" way back in 1998. This number has never been ret-conned, but never extrapolated either and never will.

4) Calculate the number you will need even after conveniently forgetting that missile wedges cannot be turned on and off at will.

5) A much better scenario, that I put forth long ago, and would be lead pipe simple in regards to station keeping, but will never go anywhere as it is not DW's MO. The death count would be lowered, so obviously it would never work, unless the plot dictates otherwise. Would be a single RD wedge placed right next to the sidewall. One per broadside. It rotates 90 to seal and 90 to let things like missiles and telemetry through. Would not give 100% coverage, would limit number of missiles thrown, but far better than a shell outside the ships wedge. We already know wedges live within wedges, otherwise it would take an unmitigated eternity for missiles to reach a safe distance to start their wedges or missiles can withstand Billions of gravities instead of "only" millions. Do the acceleration number for tube length and how far the sidewall is away + safety perimeter for wedge activation. Quite simple calc. Enjoy.

Relax wrote:
1) Read the pearl's over on thefifthimperium.com There are several hundred of them

2) Read specifically the one on wedge geometry

3) Missile wedges were a given "10km" way back in 1998. This number has never been ret-conned, but never extrapolated either and never will.

I doubt even a ship of the wall is 10km long or that its wedges are 10km apart. That means you can just use 1 missile to cover the length of an SD. Maybe 3 or 4 to cover the 'thickness' of the ship. Making sure there are no gaps and putting up 2 wallwedges will use up less than 10 missiles. Seems to be a very good option. put them in pods and launch 1 defensive pod per side per enemy salvo.

There might still be leakers from extreme angles but they would be very few and still going to hit sidewalls

4) Calculate the number you will need even after conveniently forgetting that missile wedges cannot be turned on and off at will.

If it's just 10 missiles per enemy salvo, then it's not a very expensive counter measure even if the missiles are a one use kind of thing.

OR.

You can use the same concept as MDM missiles but for defensive 'missiles' each 'stage' powers up the wedge for acouple of seconds (during the enemy missiles terminal/attack phase)

OR

Remember the donkey missile pod thingie Foraker made? Beam power to the 'missile' to power up it's wedge. Stop beaming/start beaming. If missile drives cannot handle that on and off kind of thing, then build a dedicated 'wedge generator' that does the job.

*edit* amended the calculation

Rakhmamort wrote:
I doubt even a ship of the wall is 10km long or that its wedges are 10km apart. That means you can just use 1 missile to cover the length of an SD. Maybe 3 or 4 to cover the 'thickness' of the ship. Making sure there are no gaps and putting up 2 wallwedges will use up less than 10 missiles. Seems to be a very good option. put them in pods and launch 1 defensive pod per side per enemy salvo.

There might still be leakers from extreme angles but they would be very few and still going to hit sidewalls

A superdreadnought's wedge is 300km across. It's throat is about 190 km deep, the kilt is about40km deep.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/100/1

By my admittedly back-of-a-fag-packet calculation, you'd need over 350 missile wedges to cover one side of the SD's wedge, which would have to be replaced every nine minutes even if you used MDMs, and which have to be kept close enough together to prevent laser heads finding a gap in the wall but far enough apart to avoid their own wedges intersecting and blowing a 200 square kilometer hole in the wall, beside a ship accelerating at about 5 kps squared and maneuvering around its base course.

Good luck with that.

I thought that when you lit up a missile's wedge it went 'elsewhere' in a great hurry at one of two predetermined accelerations. Any textev for the ability to adjust a missile wedge's acceleration while it's in action?

Randomiser wrote:I thought that when you lit up a missile's wedge it went 'elsewhere' in a great hurry at one of two predetermined accelerations. Any textev for the ability to adjust a missile wedge's acceleration while it's in action?

A very good point, with the wedges lit the missiles would go haring off at 450+ kps squared, and there'd be no way to tractor them into place (even assuming the ship the were protecting had that many tractors). You'd need specialist 'shield' missiles with lower-acceleration wedges. That, in turn, might force a reduction in the size of the missile wedge, depending on how exactly the wedge physics works. That would mean you'd need even more missiles to cover the required area, displacing shipkiller and EW missiles one-for-one, though the missiles themselves would likely have more time on their drives because the impeller nodes wouldn't be under so much stress.