Thinking about defensive weapons systems

I was rereading "A Rising Thunder" and had just gotten to the part about Honor thinking about the pushing the defensive weapons envelop out. That got me to think about other ways to go about that.

1) If stealthed drones can carry minifusion plants with their FTL communications and reconnaissance abilities, why couldn't they carry FTL communications, stealth, and defensive laser clusters farther out than the 3.6 million kilometer reach of the current Mark 31 counter missile.

2) Additionally, using stealthed drones, carry pod based counter missiles out to the the 3.6 million kilometer perimeter too. Using FTL communications, they would essentially be improved Viper missiles used by the Katana LAC's. These CM's would be able to catch MDM's before they were at terminal velocities. The size difference between a MDM's and Viper CM's is large and the shear number of CM's that could crammed into a pod would be more than a Katana LAC.

Both of these would benefit from a beacon to reclaim them later after combat and self-destructs if they are reclaimed without codes to prevent analysis by an enemy.

Other benefits of these defensive systems is they would activate well before penetration aids come online.

Additionally, the only way to remove these types of drones, assuming you know where they are despite their stealth, would to be fire multiple high megaton nuclear missiles near them to take them out with proximity damage, which would have the effect of blinding both sides at that location temporarily.

vkeris wrote:1) If stealthed drones can carry minifusion plants with their FTL communications and reconnaissance abilities, why couldn't they carry FTL communications, stealth, and defensive laser clusters farther out than the 3.6 million kilometer reach of the current Mark 31 counter missile.

Because adding a laser cluster to an already cramped design does not make it more capable for its primary mission. Secondly, missiles on approach to the target tend to fan out; any interceptor platform you deploy will only be able to intercept a fraction of the entire salvo (and once it starts firing, it's trivial for the enemy to choose missile trajectories that are still clear). Consider that laser clusters have an effective range of less than 50000 kilometers or so; the amount of platforms you'd have to deploy to build an effective screen is staggering (and every interceptor platform you deploy is one less sensor platform you could use to track the enemy force).

2) Additionally, using stealthed drones, carry pod based counter missiles out to the the 3.6 million kilometer perimeter too. Using FTL communications, they would essentially be improved Viper missiles used by the Katana LAC's. These CM's would be able to catch MDM's before they were at terminal velocities. The size difference between a MDM's and Viper CM's is large and the shear number of CM's that could crammed into a pod would be more than a Katana LAC.

Drones are smaller, much smaller in fact, than pods. They can't carry standard MDM pods, and they can't carry useful payloads of smaller CM pods.

Additionally, the only way to remove these types of drones, assuming you know where they are despite their stealth, would to be fire multiple high megaton nuclear missiles near them to take them out with proximity damage, which would have the effect of blinding both sides at that location temporarily.

No. The second these platforms start firing, they will be noticeable. As soon as you start intercepting the other guys' missiles, they will know about it, and I have to stress once more that avoiding the areas in which missiles get shot down is trivial.

vkeris wrote:1) If stealthed drones can carry minifusion plants with their FTL communications and reconnaissance abilities, why couldn't they carry FTL communications, stealth, and defensive laser clusters farther out than the 3.6 million kilometer reach of the current Mark 31 counter missile.

The energy budget for a point defense laser cluster is higher than that of a microfusion plant of a Ghost Rider drone.

2) Additionally, using stealthed drones, carry pod based counter missiles out to the the 3.6 million kilometer perimeter too. Using FTL communications, they would essentially be improved Viper missiles used by the Katana LAC's. These CM's would be able to catch MDM's before they were at terminal velocities. The size difference between a MDM's and Viper CM's is large and the shear number of CM's that could crammed into a pod would be more than a Katana LAC.

Powered missile pods get suggested now and again, and flounder on the same reasons. Pod stealth is passive - by sticking a drive on it, it's no longer stealthy. So now it needs active stealth, driving the energy budget higher, making the pod bigger, and so on. At that point, you've basically built a tiny LAC. At that point, you might as well go whole hog and build a Katana-like LAC for the added flexibility.

Duckk wrote:Powered missile pods get suggested now and again, and flounder on the same reasons. Pod stealth is passive - by sticking a drive on it, it's no longer stealthy. So now it needs active stealth, driving the energy budget higher, making the pod bigger, and so on. At that point, you've basically built a tiny LAC. At that point, you might as well go whole hog and build a Katana-like LAC for the added flexibility.

Now I do think if you built a single-purpose anti-missile LAC you could get a somewhat more effective design than the "dogfighter" Katana.

OTOH you might not want to tie up CLAC bays with a design that can't do anything (even in self-defense) against LACs or small warships. I'm guessing we won't see a pure anti-missile design unless BuShips goes ahead with the modular LAC designs RFC said they were thinking about. Carrying some anti-missile mission modules still allows you to installed anti-LAC or anti-shipping mission modules without having to go back to a base and swap out an entire LAC (or even LAC wing)

Do you have some evidence about the energy budget of a micro fusion plant not being enough for a pd cluster? Considering that a fission powered lac has several and that they "have enough fuel for 15-20 years " and the fact that max energy conversion is E=mC2, the reactor mass burned to run PD cluster would have to be on the order of a few milligrams. At the very least one of the micro plants should be able to charge capacitors for a few shots. Look at the grazer torpedoes their power output must be a least 3-5 orders of magnitude higher than a PD cluster.

I do not really think the remote platform idea is overly useful but I'm not sure the power budget is a problem.

Remember that a Shrike (or any other modern LAC, for that matter) manages its energy budget through its capacitor banks. A fission plant is barely able to power all the systems on a LAC, and its only through playing a careful balancing act that a Shrike can fire its graser. Even that is subject to severe limits on how often it can fire before recharging.

PDLCs are also somewhat smaller than shipboard energy mounts, but they're still in the same rough size and tonnage range. Likewise, they're also in the same rough bracket for energy requirements, and no microfusion plant can power a shipboard weapon.

While I had thought Duckk was right, the graser torpedoes does pose a question. How did they power a graser on something presumably smaller than a drone?

The answer might simply be that powering a single-use weapon like the graser is possible, but powering a laser cluster intended to fire repeatedly is too much. A PDLC that can only fire a handful of shots is not terribly useful.

SWM wrote:While I had thought Duckk was right, the graser torpedoes does pose a question. How did they power a graser on something presumably smaller than a drone?

The answer might simply be that powering a single-use weapon like the graser is possible, but powering a laser cluster intended to fire repeatedly is too much. A PDLC that can only fire a handful of shots is not terribly useful.

Remember that the graser torps are built with lengthy times between launch and attack in mind. They can use their onboard power sources to trickle-charge a couple of rather massive capacitors (Not to mention that they can be launched with those capacitors already charged).

In addition, the Torpedoes had unique design requirements; they were not bound by the constraints of having to fit into already deployed ships.

An Honor of the Queen-era point defense cluster is a little under 10 meters in length overall, and the internal stuff is much larger in cross-section than the business end you see on the ship hull. That's with 5 smaller "caliber" emitters (roughly 30cm lasers).

Current 1920's flat-pack pods are a little over 21 meters long, and larger caliber - 50cm+, and 6 emitters or more - PDLCs would be roughly 15 meters long and maybe 3 meters in cross-section.

An HotQ-era drone is about 13 meters long. Even with a bit of size creep that follows roughly the same as the ships have (or, for arguments' sake, let's take them up to twice the size), 1920's drones are still going to be smaller than a missile pod (a little longer but not as wide), and definitely too small to handle even older PDLCs.

I don't get why people think drones are big enough to handle all this extra stuff they want to cram in. Yes, they're larger than missiles, but they're still much smaller than a pinnace, and you'd need to *start* at pinnace-sized to get everything you want, although again, a flat-pack pod is roughly 2/3 the length of a pinnace, and wider than a pinnace, minus the wings.