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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by Somtaaw » Sun Sep 07, 2014 11:16 am | |
Somtaaw
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After further study, AAC battle of Hera. 4 squadrons of Katanas engaged some RHN Cimetarres at 2:3 odds. They launched Vipers not as a hammer but a stream. Specifically as a counter to possible Zizka missile defense.
Also on consideration, to better explaim my OP since we have a good discussion going. All ships seem to carry nuclear tipped missiles. This is evident because most books show all interceptions of merchant ships to use a nuke as a warning shot. Further evidence is when Grendelsbane was destroyed by Manty nukes during the RHN sneak attack. Now, standard laser head standoff range is what, around 50 thousand kilometers? Assuming you have a pod salvo from hell coming at you, a large nuclear salvo set to detonate seconds prior to the laser heads detonating makes a near solid wall to protect your squadrons or fleet. The missiles no matter how spread out during approach must come into a known area of space to detonate. The nuclear tipped missiles would just detonate first. This really is just a super sized version of existing RHN missile defense, using brute force, little to no accuracy, and numbers to compensate for lower technology to RMN defenses. Also I checked out the honorverse wiki, we've partly been arguing over nuke power. Both the standard nuclear missile and the standard laserhead are fusion based. Current real nukes are still fission I think. Also found on the wiki that MDM missiles have sensor shrouds to protect from particle damage during potentially long ballistic phases. This indicates that missile sensors are indeed able to be blinded, if a sufficiently large nuclear detonation happened in their face. |
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by Weird Harold » Sun Sep 07, 2014 12:19 pm | |
Weird Harold
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Current RW Nukes are Fusion, although they require a small fission "igniter." The problem with your original post is that not all "nukes" are created equal. The warheads used for Ziska or Triple Ripple are specifically designed against the prevailing usage of "clean nukes" in military and civilian applications. The RHN "Dirty nukes" designed for Ziska and Triple Ripple attacks only exist in LAC Missile sizes to fit Cimmeterre magazines; you won't find any of them anywhere else. As for there being a difference between Laser Heads and Nuke warheads, the only difference is whether the lasing rods deploy before the warhead explodes. If you want to fire a warning shot, you simply program the missile to not deploy the lasing rods. Early in the series, RMN ships apparently did stock some missiles without Laser heads for warning shots, but I should think that pod-based combat would make that unfeasible. .
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by MaxxQ » Sun Sep 07, 2014 1:41 pm | |
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Yes, but as mentioned by Harold, all missiles have nukes for warheads, so even a laserhead missile could be used as a warning shot, or even a contact nuke, if the opportunity should arise. The only thing that makes a laserhead missile work as a laserhead missile is deploying the laserheads a couple hundred meters forward of the nuke warhead that remains in the missile. This provides enough distance to allow the x-rays from the warhead (which is what "powers" the laser in the laserhead) to reach the laserhead before the blast front destroys the laserhead.
While the attack area is known, it is also very large. That 50k km distance is a radius, because the missile could also go *past* the target while facing backwards and attempt for a hit from the non-engaged side. Or could maneuver for an attempted kilt or throat shot. So, while the majority of missiles may attack the broadside, there may be others attempting hits from elsewhere. This means that if you're going to attempt something like the Triple Ripple, it should be done much farther away, while the missiles are still inbound and haven't spread out as much.
Yes, but as was also pointed out upthread, that requires displacing *many* of the RHN's attack missiles.
Some current RW nukes are fission and some are fusion - it all depends on what effect and/or yield you want. Fission nukes are less powerful and are usually tactical nukes, where the yield is in the kiloton range. Fusion warheads are strategic and measure in the high-kt range to megaton-range. Also, as Harold mentioned, a fusion nuke uses a fission nuke as an igniter for the fusion portion of the detonation.
Yes and no. It's basically just the cover over the laserheads and any internal components of the missiles, much like ICBMs have a shroud over the MIRVs. It's simply there to protect the sensors from particles that will be encountered when travelling at high cee-fractions. However, because there are internal sensors on the missile, the shrouds are equivalent to today's radar-transparent radomes on aircraft - usually fiberglass or similar. So while particles may not get through to damage internal or laserhead sensors, there's a definite possibility of various forms of radiation getting there to "blind" them. However, if anyone cares to look closely at my missile renders, you might notice that each laserhead has three types of sensors at the forward end: radar (or its Honorverse equivalent), LIDAR, and gravitic. As others have pointed out, gravitic sensors would ignore any kind of radiation-type interference, but because of the size of the sensors, the range is *very* limited, so they don't come into play until the last few seconds before warhead detonation. They're used for final target acquisition and the laserhead has thrusters and gyros to help it line up on the general area that it thinks the target is located. Missile sensors are much more powerful and sensitive (plus, they are receiving updates from the ship that launched them) than those on the laserheads, and are used for midrange targeting en route to the target. The gravitic sensors will be able to tell there's a grav signature "out there, thataway", but it will be like looking at a highway sign when you forgot your glasses - you can see the sign, but until you're close enough, you can't read what it says. If you really want to try playing Russian Roulette, you could try to time your defensive launch to detonate after the laserhead shrouds are jettisoned, and the laserheads are moving forward of the rest of the missile to attack position. However, that entire sequence only takes, at most, a few seconds. The timing on that would have to be incredibly precise. And again, that goes back to my second paragraph, where you have to worry about covering a sphere with a 50k km radius. =================
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by Weird Harold » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:25 pm | |
Weird Harold
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But the key issue here is that laser head missiles CANNOT be used for a Zizka or Triple Ripple style missile defense because they are NOT dirty nukes. Missile sensors are designed to deal with the normal "gunsmoke" of typical missile warhead nuclear explosions. The missiles used for a Triple Ripple aren't "typical" and are specifically designed to interfere with sensors that normally ignore nuclear explosions. If you don't have those specially designed "dirty nuke" warheads, you aren't going to cause much disruption in an incoming missile salvo -- if any. .
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by Tenshinai » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:50 pm | |
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No, both fusion and fission most definitely exists. Fusion gives you a bigger boom, but also have a much larger minimum size, cost far more to make and maintain as well as requires a more complex manufacturing base. Fission nukes can be made quite small (ref: so called suitcase nuke for example) and can also be modified in more ways. |
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by kzt » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:50 pm | |
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You don't have to hit a 50,000 km radius. At the few seconds when the laserheads are in TA mode you know that the optics are staring at the target, so the target would be setting off a really, really bright flash when someone is looking directly at it with powerful optics. It's pretty much exactly like looking directly into the sun with a big telescope. Oh, and it should also be pointed out that high yield nukes are big. Currently 6kt/kg is pretty much the wall for modern designs and only reachable for megaton range bombs. There were apparently some vague design studies in the early 1960s for monster bombs that were expected to hit 11kt/kg, but then the utility of big bombs was no longer there, so they were never built. If we assume a factor of 20 for honorverse bombs, that means a gigaton bomb (1,000,000 KT) masses 50,000 kg. And it's probably mostly 50,000 kg of lithium hydride, which is less dense than water. Or maybe Lithium Hydroxide, which is denser. This suggests a minimum warhead size of 35 cubic meters. (assuming you don't clad it in something to make it "dirty nuke"...) So how big are these missiles and how many can fit in a Cimmeterre magazine? |
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by MaxxQ » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:50 pm | |
MaxxQ
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True, but I wasn't addressing that issue. I was responding to Somtaaw (Homeworld fan, perhaps?) pointing out that nukes are used as warning shots or were used in the destruction of Grendelsbane. He never mentioned blinding sensors in the paragraph I quoted. I addressed your point, obliquely, later on in my post, and while I haven't specifically said so, I agree with you on some points, while I disagree on others. I think that no matter what you quote from textev, a gravitic sensor could not be completely blinded by a nuke, no matter how dirty they are. That said, onboard missile gravitic sensors are already pretty myopic, and missiles are generally guided for the major portion of their trip by data from the launching ship(s). However, there *might* be a chance of blinding the gravitic sensors to the target ship because of all the impeller signatures of the incoming defensive missiles - whether in a Triple Ripple or whatever. I'd think it would be a very small chance, due to data from the launching ship, but I believe there *is* a chance. It would be temporary though. I figure a few missiles would lose lock (gravitcally) and need to reacquire, either on their own or from data transmitted from the launching ship(s). A dirty nuke *might* have the effect of disrupting comms from the launching ship(s), if the contact is made far enough out that the missile's onboard sensors still can't see much of anything. Harold, you make many good points in your posts (either on this subject or others), but something I've noticed is that you tend to have blinders on when it comes to a pet subject. Witness your response to my last post where you quote me on something that has no bearing on your response to said quote. This is not a put-down... merely an observation. =================
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by Tenshinai » Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:57 pm | |
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Oh but there´s plenty. Especially, there´s a number of ways that a nuke can be made into a shaped charge of various sorts, but there´s also ways to modify them so as to maximize radiation output and type, blastwave, incineration effect, atomisation effect etc... |
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by kzt » Sun Sep 07, 2014 3:34 pm | |
kzt
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Most of those don't work in deep space. The shaped effects will, and I understand you can fiddle with the ratio between xray and gamma somewhat, but without an atmosphere (or some other huge amount of mass) and/or a magnetosphere to interact with you can't do some of the others. And worse is that you have to get very close to do a whole lot. This entire topic is pretty much just like the scene of the BC at Hell, where the fusion reactor would have had to yield a totally absurd amount of energy to do what was described. So it's not worth discussion. |
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Re: Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes? | |
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by Tenshinai » Sun Sep 07, 2014 5:03 pm | |
Tenshinai
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Actually, you CAN do them(at least to some extent), by supplying your own "material" instead of atmosphere, hence why i noted that those "dirty nukes" were unlikely to have anything to do with cobalt, as that is essentially useless for in space actions.
Using up weeks worth of reaction mass in 35 minutes isn´t good enough for you? |
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