Missile Counter Missile

Could a real missile be used as a counter missile?

A counter missile is small basically a practice missile without a warhead.

A missile is all that, larger and has a warhead part.

Surely a missile could run into incoming missiles.

Apollo allows for counter missile targeting, mainly to avoid it, but a switch to targeting shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Finally with multi stages each independantly powered, a two, three, four stage missile depending on ranges may be able to engage in powered envelope anti ship attack and detach one or more additional stages to act as CM's while the other stages continue the original attack.

A Mk16 could attack at 30 million km each stage having a 20 million km range the cross over for missile about 15 million klicks. Detaching the running stage and the next stage, the running stage becomes a CM and the next stage starting up the final missile stage. Any ship within the next 20 million km is in range of attack. A Nike doing this quad stacked could remove a percentage one might assume 1\3rd of 200 incoming missiles or 66 incoming missiles half way in. More if they are not running EW all the way in. Without compromising ones own attack.

With a 3 or four stage Mk23\25 missile one should be able to carry on a full long distance attack using two stages, and deploy one or two CM stages. Even Apollo missiles and EW could do this. The Apollo would also be able to enhance the CM action bringing the precentage up closer to the standard 40-45% interception. Assuming a 200 missile plus 25 Apollo salvo per SD(P) should on the coasting phase allow for 225-450 CM actions. With a 40% ratio 90-180 or more CM per ship to thin any incoming missiles while maintaining a two stage attack salvo. Could also enhance system defense pod capabilities.

Presumably a tube could also launch a single stage long range 20 million km, CM as well using half a Mk16 missile ammunition magazine space or less. Adding a quad stacked Keyhole controlled CM to a Nike should help its defensive envelope. Plus 20 million km range is almost 6 times CM range. A Nike has the magazine depth to use this.

Lord Skimper wrote:Could a real missile be used as a counter missile?

A counter missile is small basically a practice missile without a warhead.

A missile is all that, larger and has a warhead part.

Surely a missile could run into incoming missiles.

Apollo allows for counter missile targeting, mainly to avoid it, but a switch to targeting shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Finally with multi stages each independantly powered, a two, three, four stage missile depending on ranges may be able to engage in powered envelope anti ship attack and detach one or more additional stages to act as CM's while the other stages continue the original attack.

First, the missiles Manticore, Haven, Grayson, etc are throwing around a multi-drive missiles not multi-stage missiles.

They don't separate or drop parts of themselves (well until the lasing rods separate instants before warhead detonation). So no, there's no chance they can split apart to let almost burned out drives attempt to hit something.



Now Cataphract missiles do appear to actually be a staged missile, the CM drive part seems to separate from the larger 1st stage. But even there you can't independently target the first stage at something post-separation. The stages wouldn't be able to successfully separate until the 1st stage wedge shuts down (otherwise both just blow up from wedge collision) and once a missile shuts down a set of drive nodes they burn out and can't be restarted. (Oh and the first stage doesn't have any sensors so not only can't it maneuver or pull of a wedge impact it's also blind)



All that said, yes if an offensive missile's wedge collided with another offensive missile's wedge they'd suffer mutual annihilation. It's not really economical to waste your offensive missiles that way, and their sensors and controls aren't optimized for it, but wedge collisions still 'work' between them.

Hi Jonathan_S,

Kudos for your simple complete explanation.

Mine would have been closer to remember what you read in the books or the pearls.

This idea has been suggested before and answered.

Let us move on.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Could a real missile be used as a counter missile?

A counter missile is small basically a practice missile without a warhead.

A missile is all that, larger and has a warhead part.

Surely a missile could run into incoming missiles.

Apollo allows for counter missile targeting, mainly to avoid it, but a switch to targeting shouldn't be too much of a challenge.

Finally with multi stages each independantly powered, a two, three, four stage missile depending on ranges may be able to engage in powered envelope anti ship attack and detach one or more additional stages to act as CM's while the other stages continue the original attack.

First, the missiles Manticore, Haven, Grayson, etc are throwing around a multi-drive missiles not multi-stage missiles.

They don't separate or drop parts of themselves (well until the lasing rods separate instants before warhead detonation). So no, there's no chance they can split apart to let almost burned out drives attempt to hit something.



Now Cataphract missiles do appear to actually be a staged missile, the CM drive part seems to separate from the larger 1st stage. But even there you can't independently target the first stage at something post-separation. The stages wouldn't be able to successfully separate until the 1st stage wedge shuts down (otherwise both just blow up from wedge collision) and once a missile shuts down a set of drive nodes they burn out and can be restarted. (Oh and the first stage doesn't have any sensors so not only can't it maneuver or pull of a wedge impact it's also blind)



All that said, yes if an offensive missile's wedge collided with another offensive missile's wedge they'd suffer mutual annihilation. It's not really economical to waste your offensive missiles that way, and their sensors and controls aren't optimized for it, but wedge collisions still 'work' between them.

Jonathan_S wrote: But even there you can't independently target the first stage at something post-separation. The stages wouldn't be able to successfully separate until the 1st stage wedge shuts down

Not true.

Separate before 1st drive shuts down. Time delayed wedge activation. "Problem" solved.

No reason first stage could not have sensors grafted on. Currently 1st stage Cataphracts are blind. More mass and $$$ of course. Is it worth it? Honor thinks so. Says as much in ART. Wanting to deploy her CM's farther out giving a deeper defensive depth. Of course need a method to update control links better as per the books said missiles are effectively blind and % interception rates drop with distance. It should be noted that after a certain distance(time delay) the interception % rates will be flat. Updates will not help. I leave it to the budding mathematicians and simple physics students to plug into Excel when this happens and then view this "insight" in light of the books Canon...

J6P wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: But even there you can't independently target the first stage at something post-separation. The stages wouldn't be able to successfully separate until the 1st stage wedge shuts down

Not true.

Separate before 1st drive shuts down. Time delayed wedge activation. "Problem" solved.

No reason first stage could not have sensors grafted on. Currently 1st stage Cataphracts are blind. More mass and $$$ of course. Is it worth it? Honor thinks so. Says as much in ART. Wanting to deploy her CM's farther out giving a deeper defensive depth.

If the 1st stage wedge is up it's strongly accelerating the whole missile at 48,000 or so Gs (or more if it's not stepped down to half accel to increase endurance). Now some of that is 'invisilbe' to the missile components because the missile's nodes provide a compensating effect, but I don't know how much (and that effect should end very abruptly if you move much away from the nodes)

Yes you could delay the second stage activation, but you've still got to launch it clear (without impacting the wedge). Seems tricky and impractical.

Jonathan_S wrote:

J6P wrote:
Not true.

Separate before 1st drive shuts down. Time delayed wedge activation. "Problem" solved.

No reason first stage could not have sensors grafted on. Currently 1st stage Cataphracts are blind. More mass and $$$ of course. Is it worth it? Honor thinks so. Says as much in ART. Wanting to deploy her CM's farther out giving a deeper defensive depth.

If the 1st stage wedge is up it's strongly accelerating the whole missile at 48,000 or so Gs (or more if it's not stepped down to half accel to increase endurance). Now some of that is 'invisilbe' to the missile components because the missile's nodes provide a compensating effect, but I don't know how much (and that effect should end very abruptly if you move much away from the nodes)

Yes you could delay the second stage activation, but you've still got to launch it clear (without impacting the wedge). Seems tricky and impractical.

Excuse me, guys, but the second stage of the Cataphract can't bring its wedge up until its perimeter would clear that of the first stage. So since it needs the wedge to accelerate faster than the first stage can, it can't bring up its wedge until the first stage's is down, either burned out or shut down, and missile wedges cannot be turned back on after they're turned off.

This may, perhaps, create a tiny problem with your two-fer plans.

J6P wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: But even there you can't independently target the first stage at something post-separation. The stages wouldn't be able to successfully separate until the 1st stage wedge shuts down

Not true.

Separate before 1st drive shuts down. Time delayed wedge activation. "Problem" solved.

Not sure I'm understanding this. Are you saying that a staged missile could/should separate its booster stage *before* said booster shuts down? While the sustainer holds off on *its* impeller ring activation?

Not going to work, unless the booster is "pulling" the sustainer. Once the sustainer separates, it becomes a separate part, not attached to the booster, and therefore, not succeptible to the accel of the booster, which still happens to be behind the sustainer, accelerating at 48k G's (or whatever number you happen to plug in).

Meanwhile, the sustainer is accelerating at 0 G's. How do you propose to move it away from the booster before the booster impacts with it? Remember, it will need to have a higher acceleration than the booster in order to get away from it.

Missile wedges only have three accel settings: None, Full, and Half, so to do a staged missile, you would need to either wait to stage until the booster is burned out (defeating the original intent of this thread, which is actually fine by me, as it's ridiculous), or light off the sustainer at the Full accel rate while the booster has only been at the Half rate. Problem there is you get immediate wedge interference from the two stages.

Third option is to have the booster at the *front* of the missile (as I mentioned above). When the sustainer separates, it delays wedge activation for a second or so, allowing the booster to accel away from the sustainer before it activates its own wedge. While this *might* be workable, I feel confident in saying it ain't gonna happen.

Frankly, the entire proposal is pretty stupid. Sure, you *can* use a regular attack missile as a "countermissile", but what sane person would ever do that? It would be like the U.S. using a Minuteman III to take out a Chinese (or Russian) ICBM.

Let's not even think about the issue of having to add a second fusion reactor (assuming we're talking about Mk16 or Mk23 type missiles), fuel for said reactor, and space for the guidance system, effectively increasing the length of the missile by about 60% (and that's only if you add a single booster - multiple boosters will more than double the length). This means the ship will probably have reduced magazines, since all that extra length has to fit somewhere. Someone tell me what Navy in its right mind would accept fewer missiles in its loadout, just to use *some* of the (even more) limited supply it has for something other than its primary purpose of attacking an enemy ship.

It's not like each drive of a DDM or MDM use separate reactors - both rings on DDMs and all three rings on MDMs (or four rings for the system defense variant) are all powered from a single reactor.

Aha... I noticed that RFC posted while I was writing this. He actually said what I said, but a bit more succintly.

Hi MaxxQ,

Succinct is right.

Any briefer and he wouldn't be RFC.

But any post is always great.

L


Of course RFC has swatted me a couple of times for forgetting something twice, albeit some years apart, although I don't remember what after all these years.

MaxxQ wrote:

J6P wrote:**quote="Jonathan_S"** But even there you can't independently target the first stage at something post-separation. The stages wouldn't be able to successfully separate until the 1st stage wedge shuts down **/quote**

Not true.

Separate before 1st drive shuts down. Time delayed wedge activation. "Problem" solved.

Not sure I'm understanding this. Are you saying that a staged missile could/should separate its booster stage *before* said booster shuts down? While the sustainer holds off on *its* impeller ring activation?

Not going to work, unless the booster is "pulling" the sustainer. Once the sustainer separates, it becomes a separate part, not attached to the booster, and therefore, not succeptible to the accel of the booster, which still happens to be behind the sustainer, accelerating at 48k G's (or whatever number you happen to plug in).

Meanwhile, the sustainer is accelerating at 0 G's. How do you propose to move it away from the booster before the booster impacts with it? Remember, it will need to have a higher acceleration than the booster in order to get away from it.

Missile wedges only have three accel settings: None, Full, and Half, so to do a staged missile, you would need to either wait to stage until the booster is burned out (defeating the original intent of this thread, which is actually fine by me, as it's ridiculous), or light off the sustainer at the Full accel rate while the booster has only been at the Half rate. Problem there is you get immediate wedge interference from the two stages.

Third option is to have the booster at the *front* of the missile (as I mentioned above). When the sustainer separates, it delays wedge activation for a second or so, allowing the booster to accel away from the sustainer before it activates its own wedge. While this *might* be workable, I feel confident in saying it ain't gonna happen.

Frankly, the entire proposal is pretty stupid. Sure, you *can* use a regular attack missile as a "countermissile", but what sane person would ever do that? It would be like the U.S. using a Minuteman III to take out a Chinese (or Russian) ICBM.

Let's not even think about the issue of having to add a second fusion reactor (assuming we're talking about Mk16 or Mk23 type missiles), fuel for said reactor, and space for the guidance system, effectively increasing the length of the missile by about 60% (and that's only if you add a single booster - multiple boosters will more than double the length). This means the ship will probably have reduced magazines, since all that extra length has to fit somewhere. Someone tell me what Navy in its right mind would accept fewer missiles in its loadout, just to use *some* of the (even more) limited supply it has for something other than its primary purpose of attacking an enemy ship.

It's not like each drive of a DDM or MDM use separate reactors - both rings on DDMs and all three rings on MDMs (or four rings for the system defense variant) are all powered from a single reactor.

Aha... I noticed that RFC posted while I was writing this. He actually said what I said, but a bit more succintly.

MaxxQ wrote:Missile wedges only have three accel settings: None, Full, and Half, so to do a staged missile, you would need to either wait to stage until the booster is burned out (defeating the original intent of this thread, which is actually fine by me, as it's ridiculous), or light off the sustainer at the Full accel rate while the booster has only been at the Half rate. Problem there is you get immediate wedge interference from the two stages.

I agree with the rest of your post, but I have a nitpick about this. Most people design missiles with only 3 hardwired accel settings. But we were told that Manticore does include additional flexibility, so if there's some unusual reason to use an intermediate acceleration their captains can. (I don't think we've ever seen them actually do that; but we're told their missiles support it)

But the ability to design a missile with more than 3 accel settings in no way alters your real point.

MaxxQ wrote:Aha... I noticed that RFC posted while I was writing this. He actually said what I said, but a bit more succintly.

Yep. I'm just wishing my 2nd post about this had more clearly shown that I still didn't think it would work. I think I got swept up in the "your plans", when I was only trying to point out why even J6P's refined idea had major problems. Ah well.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yep. I'm just wishing my 2nd post about this had more clearly shown that I still didn't think it would work. I think I got swept up in the "your plans", when I was only trying to point out why even J6P's refined idea had major problems. Ah well.

I still think my converted Mk23 has some potential.