Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes?

Dafmeister wrote:

kzt wrote:If "dirty nukes" worked, you'd expect that every ship would be firing them off off as a missile salvo approached. It's not like the missile sensors can look away from their target during the last 3 seconds of flight, so that should fry those sensors real good....

It probably would work very effectively. It would also dazzle your own shipboard sensors and require you to use your broadside tubes for defensive fire, since the dirty nuke warheads seem to be too big for a CM.

I simply lay it down to having his missile tech "both ways." Leaves our favorite author in chief lots of wiggle room.

PS. If 1000 missiles are about to detonate in your face, you really don't give a damn if you blind your own sensors if at the same time you blind all of theirs as well.

kzt wrote:Though you do have to wonder how cladding a nuke in cobalt is supposed to do anything that will enhance its effects on enemy missiles when detonated in deep space.

Who said anything about them using cobalt?

There are quite a few things already known today that you can do with nukes to change how they "explode".

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:Though you do have to wonder how cladding a nuke in cobalt is supposed to do anything that will enhance its effects on enemy missiles when detonated in deep space.

Who said anything about them using cobalt?

There are quite a few things already known today that you can do with nukes to change how they "explode".

Dirty nuke is a phrase that means having the warhead produce large amounts of highly radioactive products intentionally.

kzt wrote:Dirty nuke is a phrase that means having the warhead produce large amounts of highly radioactive products intentionally.

Yes i know.

Nothing says it has to be made one specific way, or result in one specific end "shape".

And it´s rather obvious from the description of its use that spreading radioactively contaminating material is not what those "dirty nukes" were built for.

And "dirty nuke" is not restricted to a single, overly specific meaning.
It can also refer to a nuke that generates maximum amounts of EM radiation rather than radioactive material, among other things.

Tenshinai wrote:
And "dirty nuke" is not restricted to a single, overly specific meaning.
It can also refer to a nuke that generates maximum amounts of EM radiation rather than radioactive material, among other things.

Nukes in space generate virtually all their energy as EM radiation, mostly X-rays, though some gamma too. This has pretty limited ability (as about zero) to damage hardened and shielded systems at tens of thousands of km range.

And if it did, it would obviously work even better against missile laser heads outside the shrouds staring directly at the "dirty nuke" with the anti-radiation fields turned off.

kzt wrote:Nukes in space generate virtually all their energy as EM radiation, mostly X-rays, though some gamma too. This has pretty limited ability (as about zero) to damage hardened and shielded systems at tens of thousands of km range.

You're still having trouble with "Specifically Designed" by people who know exactly what it takes to scramble Honorverse sensors and EW.

War of Honor
Chapter Twenty
wrote:Like the missiles which suddenly detonated long before any Manticoran would have expected them to. Missiles which contained absolutely no seeking systems, no penetration aides, no standoff laser heads—only the biggest, nastiest, dirtiest nuclear warheads Mitchell Clapp or anyone he could recruit had been able to design. Those warheads weren't designed to destroy enemy LACs; they were designed to strip away the enemy's EW advantages, and it was evident from the plot that they'd done just that.

The brutal wavefronts of plasma and radiation lashed out from the tsunami of missiles. No one had adopted such a brute force application to clearing away decoys and jammers in centuries. Even after the missile pod had reemerged, with its vulnerability to proximity "soft kills," no one had ever attempted to apply the same technique to electronic warfare drones and remote platforms. But that was because of the ranges at which deep space engagements were fought, and the dispersal which warships with impeller wedges hundreds of kilometers across were forced to maintain. Neither of those factors applied to the overgrown pinnaces Clapp had designed. The Cimeterre, even more than its Manticoran counterparts, was designed to get in close. It was a knife-fighter, not a sniper, and it eschewed sophistication and finesse for up close and personal, bare-knuckle, eye-gouging combat.

What you know, or don't know, about real world nukes isn't worth a spit in a blast furnace. What matters is that in the Honorverse, the plasma and radiation produced by "dirty nukes" specifically designed to do so WILL disrupt the EW and sensors of LACs. Drones, or missiles.

Weird Harold wrote:What you know, or don't know, about real world nukes isn't worth a spit in a blast furnace. What matters is that in the Honorverse, the plasma and radiation produced by "dirty nukes" specifically designed to do so WILL disrupt the EW and sensors of LACs. Drones, or missiles.

Sure, which is why they are commonly used as a last-ditch defensive measure by ships, right?

If not, please explain why.

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:Though you do have to wonder how cladding a nuke in cobalt is supposed to do anything that will enhance its effects on enemy missiles when detonated in deep space.

Who said anything about them using cobalt?

There are quite a few things already known today that you can do with nukes to change how they "explode".

Good point about the cobalt, although I seriously doubt if there's anything you can do to a nuke to change how it explodes. That area has been rather thoroughly studied in the last 3/4 century or so; unless there's more fantasy physics involved there are a relatively small number of fissionable isotopes that will stay stable long enough to be manufactured and carried on shipboard before they've decayed to where they have to be re-refined and remanufactured.

Granted, the processes involved in refining and manufacturing the stuff have probably advanced considerably, but there's otherwise no indication that the Honorverse has changed basic nuclear physics.

That said, though, there are probably a lot of things you can cover a nuke in that will absorb excess neutrons and result in a force multiplier. Candidates have to result in a very short half-life result after absorbing one or two neutrons, though, if they're going to be effective at adding to the jamming effect. By short I mean milliseconds or less.

An interesting possibility would be Li-7, which would become Be-8 on absorbing a neutron. Be-8 has a very short half-life (6.8 x 10**-17 s), which is why stars like the sun don't make appreciable amounts of carbon. Be-8 is sitting in the most favored synthesis paths.

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:What you know, or don't know, about real world nukes isn't worth a spit in a blast furnace. What matters is that in the Honorverse, the plasma and radiation produced by "dirty nukes" specifically designed to do so WILL disrupt the EW and sensors of LACs. Drones, or missiles.

Sure, which is why they are commonly used as a last-ditch defensive measure by ships, right?

If not, please explain why.

These 'last-ditch defence' nukes would have to be mounted on shipkiller-sized missiles, as they're too big for CMs. That means they would:

a) take up magazine space which would otherwise be used for shipkillers.

b) require you to cease fire on your enemy while you launch them.

c) have to be inserted into the missile queues, and based on textev from OBS and HOQ this is going to take a little time. Not minutes, but too long to be done as a snap shot.

In addition, as well as blinding the incoming missiles, the defence nukes are going to dazzle your own, better protected but also much more sensitive, shipboard sensors and wreak havoc on any decoys, EW platforms and pods deployed outside your own wedge and radiation shields. There's also nothing in textev to say whether the effect on sensors is temporary or if there's permanent degradation. Blinding yourself to stop a killer missile salvo may be useful occasionally, but most of the time it'll just stop you responding to the next salvo, or throwing one of your own in return.

kzt wrote:Sure, which is why they are commonly used as a last-ditch defensive measure by ships, right?

If not, please explain why.

Other than RHN Cimmeterres armed for a Triple Ripple, who has dirty nukes specifically designed to disrupt the sensors and EW of LACs, Drones and Missiles?