Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

Rakhmamort wrote:

Duckk wrote:quote
I know there is no instance yet of Mod Gs being used against solly BCs but it took less than that to destroy the first BC in Monica and the damage that BC took was staggered.
/quote

That was clearly a Golden BB. Plus the crews weren't all that competent. Subsequent books have mentioned how lucky that was.

True, but the number of hits was from way less than 30 weaker attack missiles and damage was not in one big sledgehammer hit but in installment pattern. I do not have any proof but I believe getting all the damage in one huge lump would be more destructive than in penny packet lumps where the ships systems can sort of 'reset' or re-establish some sort of equilibrium before getting hit again.

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:“He’s got to be crazy, Ma’am,” Tucker Kiernan told Oxana Dubroskaya flatly. “Five light cruisers against four battlecruisers? They’ve got at most—what? Maybe eight tubes per broadside? Well, we’ve got twenty-eight per broadside!”

***Snip***

The governor might have hoped to have even more firepower available, but four battlecruisers against five light cruisers was an overwhelming mismatch by anyone’s standards. And if she and Dueñas pulled it off—if they forced an entire Manty light cruiser squadron to tamely roll over and surrender—Education and Information’s talking heads would turn it into an overwhelming triumph. The sort of thing the Solarian public wanted to hear about as an antidote for the rumors of devastation coming out of Spindle.

***Snip***

Zavala reached up to put his hand on the taller Auerbach’s shoulder and squeezed gently. And, he admitted to himself, the chief of staff had a point. No one in DesRon 301 had been particularly happy with Fire Plan Zephyr, the alternative to Sledgehammer, yet he had to concede that it would be more elegant and might—might!—reduce the severity of the incident which was about to occur here in Saltash.

***Snip***

The problem was that it would also be riskier . . . and far less personally satisfying.
I wonder how honest I’ve been with myself about this? Zavala thought. It would be riskier, but how much have I allowed that satisfaction quotient to color my thinking?
He made himself stand back and consider the alternatives one more time.
Zephyr would be more in the way of a demonstration of the consequences of unreasonableness than a serious attack: a concentrated salvo of Mark 16s fired from far beyond the Sollies’ effective range to penetrate their defenses without hitting anything, much as Duchess Harrington had done to the Havenites’ Second Fleet with Apollo at First Manticore and Captain Ivanov had done more recently, in Zunker. In theory, a reasonable Solarian commander would realize most of his ships would be pounded into ruin in the fifteen or sixteen minutes it would take him to get into his own range of Zavala’s squadron. At which point, that hypothetical reasonable Solarian commander would conclude he had no alternative but to stand down after all.
There was, however, a minor weakness in that logic: it presupposed a reasonable Solarian commander. There’d been precious few of those in evidence since Josef Byng had come upon the scene. Worse, if the commander on the other side refused to take the hint, Zavala would have wasted one of his salvos for no return, and a Roland’s limited magazine space was its Achilles’ heel. With only twenty rounds for each of his tubes, he couldn’t afford to “waste” ammunition. And, still worse, even a Solly who wasn’t totally unreasonable might decide he could survive whatever DesRon 301 could throw at him for fifteen minutes and still get to grips with the destroyers. Zavala didn’t think Dubroskaya could, but his analysis of the only engagement between a Mark 16-armed force and Solarian-designed battlecruisers suggested that they might. Of course, Aivars Terekhov had been equipped with the first-generation Mark 16 at the Battle of Monica, whereas DesRon 301’s birds mounted the latest Mod G laser heads. That probably changed the equation considerably, but there was no way for Zavala to know that.
Either way, given their closing velocity, the Sollies were going to overfly his own ships before they could decelerate, and any of the battlecruisers which survived the crossing might well escape into hyper after all. Zavala doubted any of them would survive, and even if they did get into their own missile range of DesRon 301 before they were knocked out, a Roland-class destroyer’s missile defenses were actually considerably tougher than an Indefatigable’s, given the superiority of Manticore’s counter-missiles, decoys, and ECM.

***Snip***

“I am Vice Admiral Oxana Dubroskaya, Solarian League Navy,” she said coldly. “What can I do for you, Captain Zavala?”

Jonathan_S wrote:I think that's what the intelligent system "weak AI" computer in the Apollo Control missile is trying to offset. Even if lightspeed mode, it's taking the information and targetting that the ship's single control channel is providing and "intelligently" (aka applying expert system rules) to expand upon that in what it then tells each of the 8 missiles of it's brood to do. (That's why IIRC someone said that even in pure lightspeed control mode that an Apollo pod of missiles was still somewhat more effective than a pod of non-Apollo missiles)

But there's got to be a limit to how far even those 'brilliant' computers can expand upon the info provided by a single control link. So if you cascade ACMs together, so one control link is now handling not 8, but 64 attack/ECM birds, the ACMs probably (as you said) do a far worse job coordinating and providing details to each of those missiles.

Rakhmamort wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:***Snip***

2) We've seen that its easier to stop missiles aimed directly at you than at ships in company with you. And the Rolands wouldn't split their fire, they'd target everything on one BC at a time. So it's not 8 BC each stopping 5 missiles coming at it. It's 1 BC targeted by 40 missiles, and 7 other BCs trying desperately to help it beat back the fire.

That is true if we are talking about laser point defense. Counter missiles however just need to get a wedge on wedge collision. It may be harder to do if it's from an angle but if each BC target 1 attacking missile with several CMs, then the likelihood of taking that attack missile goes up. I know the current SOP is to assign 1 CM per attack missile but it would be a dumb move for sollies not to change that SOP if they have far more CM launchers than the attacking missiles.

Vince wrote:Minor edit of quote tags to avoid forum embedded quote limit.

Rakhmamort wrote:
True, but the number of hits was from way less than 30 weaker attack missiles and damage was not in one big sledgehammer hit but in installment pattern. I do not have any proof but I believe getting all the damage in one huge lump would be more destructive than in penny packet lumps where the ships systems can sort of 'reset' or re-establish some sort of equilibrium before getting hit again.

Two points:

1) The quote Duckk was replying to stated that the Mk16G hadn't been used yet against SLN BCs. Presumably the original poster was referring to the Battle of the Monica (The Shadow of Saganami) where ex-SLN BCs were initially engaged only by CA HMS Hexapuma with Mark 16 DDMs with the original warhead, and either hadn't yet read or had forgotten the Battle of Saltash (Shadow of Freedom).

2) We have seen, as of Shadow of Freedom, Mark 16 DDMs with the Mod G warhead used against SLN BCs at the Battle of Saltash (note that the Solarians are mistaking the Roland-class destroyers for light cruisers):

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:“He’s got to be crazy, Ma’am,” Tucker Kiernan told Oxana Dubroskaya flatly. “Five light cruisers against four battlecruisers? They’ve got at most—what? Maybe eight tubes per broadside? Well, we’ve got twenty-eight per broadside!”

***Snip***

The governor might have hoped to have even more firepower available, but four battlecruisers against five light cruisers was an overwhelming mismatch by anyone’s standards. And if she and Dueñas pulled it off—if they forced an entire Manty light cruiser squadron to tamely roll over and surrender—Education and Information’s talking heads would turn it into an overwhelming triumph. The sort of thing the Solarian public wanted to hear about as an antidote for the rumors of devastation coming out of Spindle.

***Snip***

Zavala reached up to put his hand on the taller Auerbach’s shoulder and squeezed gently. And, he admitted to himself, the chief of staff had a point. No one in DesRon 301 had been particularly happy with Fire Plan Zephyr, the alternative to Sledgehammer, yet he had to concede that it would be more elegant and might—might!—reduce the severity of the incident which was about to occur here in Saltash.

***Snip***

The problem was that it would also be riskier . . . and far less personally satisfying.
I wonder how honest I’ve been with myself about this? Zavala thought. It would be riskier, but how much have I allowed that satisfaction quotient to color my thinking?
He made himself stand back and consider the alternatives one more time.
Zephyr would be more in the way of a demonstration of the consequences of unreasonableness than a serious attack: a concentrated salvo of Mark 16s fired from far beyond the Sollies’ effective range to penetrate their defenses without hitting anything, much as Duchess Harrington had done to the Havenites’ Second Fleet with Apollo at First Manticore and Captain Ivanov had done more recently, in Zunker. In theory, a reasonable Solarian commander would realize most of his ships would be pounded into ruin in the fifteen or sixteen minutes it would take him to get into his own range of Zavala’s squadron. At which point, that hypothetical reasonable Solarian commander would conclude he had no alternative but to stand down after all.
There was, however, a minor weakness in that logic: it presupposed a reasonable Solarian commander. There’d been precious few of those in evidence since Josef Byng had come upon the scene. Worse, if the commander on the other side refused to take the hint, Zavala would have wasted one of his salvos for no return, and a Roland’s limited magazine space was its Achilles’ heel. With only twenty rounds for each of his tubes, he couldn’t afford to “waste” ammunition. And, still worse, even a Solly who wasn’t totally unreasonable might decide he could survive whatever DesRon 301 could throw at him for fifteen minutes and still get to grips with the destroyers. Zavala didn’t think Dubroskaya could, but his analysis of the only engagement between a Mark 16-armed force and Solarian-designed battlecruisers suggested that they might. Of course, Aivars Terekhov had been equipped with the first-generation Mark 16 at the Battle of Monica, whereas DesRon 301’s birds mounted the latest Mod G laser heads. That probably changed the equation considerably, but there was no way for Zavala to know that.
Either way, given their closing velocity, the Sollies were going to overfly his own ships before they could decelerate, and any of the battlecruisers which survived the crossing might well escape into hyper after all. Zavala doubted any of them would survive, and even if they did get into their own missile range of DesRon 301 before they were knocked out, a Roland-class destroyer’s missile defenses were actually considerably tougher than an Indefatigable’s, given the superiority of Manticore’s counter-missiles, decoys, and ECM.

***Snip***

“I am Vice Admiral Oxana Dubroskaya, Solarian League Navy,” she said coldly. “What can I do for you, Captain Zavala?”

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Followed by a double-stacked 'broadside' (chaseside?) from each of DesRon 301's 5 Roland destroyers.*

* Each Roland double-stacked 24 missiles, firining 12 at a time (12 tubes per Roland, 6 tubes fore and 6 tubes aft). Total salvo size was 120 Mark 16 DDMs, each with the Mod G warhead. Each salvo was NOT spread out over all the 4 SLN BCs. Instead ALL 120 missiles in each salvo were each concentrated on a single, separate BC.

Salvo 1, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Paladin (BC). Results: only 1 Mark 16 DDM attack missile intercepted by SLN CMs, 99 Mark 16 DDMs attack SLNS Paladin, with only a third of the lasers hitting the roof and floor of the BCs wedge. SLNS Paladin was completely destroyed, lost with all hands.

Salvo 2, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Vanquisher (BC). Results: SLNS Vanquisher completely destroyed, 111 crewmen escaped due to orders given by Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to all remaining SLN BCs to abandon ship.

Salvo 3, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Success (BC). Results: SLNS Success completely destroyed, 1/2 of crew escaped due to orders previously given by Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to all remaining SLN BCs to abandon ship.

Salvo 4, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Inexorable (BC). Results: SLNS Inexorable completely destroyed, 3/4 of crew escaped due to orders previously given by Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to all remaining SLN BCs to abandon ship.

It is a cardinal principle in Honorverse navies (concentration of fire) that you do not spread out your weight of fire against multiple or all targets. Instead you concentrate it on only one or a few targets, and only those that matter,* unless you have sufficient firepower at the point of contact where you can increase the number of targets you can successfully engage at one time (totally destroy or mission-kill, preferably in as few salvos as possible--one salvo = one destroyed or mission-killed target being the ideal ratio).

Targets that matter can vary. For example at Fourth Yeltsin, Honor initially targeted only 12 of Thurston's BBs, not all of the 24 in range, and completely ignored any smaller ships until the GSN and PRN forces interpenetrated at energy range--even then only BBs and BCs were reported killed or damaged.

While at the Battle of Carson, Commodore Saganami in HMS Nike targeted smaller ships starting with DDs in order to cripple or kill as many enemy ships as possible in order to maximize the number of merchantmen that could escape pursuit.

Vince wrote:The problem for SLN CM point defense is threefold:

1) The speed of incoming DDMs or MDMs (as opposed to the much lower terminal speed of SDMs) makes it much harder to intercept them. See Effective intercept range for counter-missiles.

2) They don't have enough counter-missile tubes to launch and control CMs in the numbers necessary to defeat double-stacked salvos of attack missiles.

3) Their ECCM (ability to see through incoming ECM missiles and accurately identify attack missile threats) is really bad. At the Battle of Saltash, with the very first salvo, the four combined BCs managed exactly one successful counter-missile interception against 100 attack missiles (the other 20 were Dazzler and Dragon's Teeth ECM missiles). One third of the lasers attacked the roof and floor of SLNS Paladin's wedge, the rest got through. The result was the BC was lost with all hands.

Vince wrote:Followed by a double-stacked 'broadside' (chaseside?) from each of DesRon 301's 5 Roland destroyers.*

* Each Roland double-stacked 24 missiles, firining 12 at a time (12 tubes per Roland, 6 tubes fore and 6 tubes aft). Total salvo size was 120 Mark 16 DDMs, each with the Mod G warhead. Each salvo was NOT spread out over all the 4 SLN BCs. Instead ALL 120 missiles in each salvo were each concentrated on a single, separate BC.

Salvo 1, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Paladin (BC). Results: only 1 Mark 16 DDM attack missile intercepted by SLN CMs, 99 Mark 16 DDMs attack SLNS Paladin, with only a third of the lasers hitting the roof and floor of the BCs wedge. SLNS Paladin was completely destroyed, lost with all hands.

Salvo 2, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Vanquisher (BC). Results: SLNS Vanquisher completely destroyed, 111 crewmen escaped due to orders given by Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to all remaining SLN BCs to abandon ship.

Salvo 3, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Success (BC). Results: SLNS Success completely destroyed, 1/2 of crew escaped due to orders previously given by Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to all remaining SLN BCs to abandon ship.

Salvo 4, consisting of 120 Mark 16 DDMs, including 20 ECM birds (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth) and 100 attack birds with Mod G warheads Salvo 1 versus SLNS Inexorable (BC). Results: SLNS Inexorable completely destroyed, 3/4 of crew escaped due to orders previously given by Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to all remaining SLN BCs to abandon ship.

It is a cardinal principle in Honorverse navies (concentration of fire) that you do not spread out your weight of fire against multiple or all targets. Instead you concentrate it on only one or a few targets, and only those that matter,* unless you have sufficient firepower at the point of contact where you can increase the number of targets you can successfully engage at one time (totally destroy or mission-kill, preferably in as few salvos as possible--one salvo = one destroyed or mission-killed target being the ideal ratio).

Targets that matter can vary. For example at Fourth Yeltsin, Honor initially targeted only 12 of Thurston's BBs, not all of the 24 in range, and completely ignored any smaller ships until the GSN and PRN forces interpenetrated at energy range--even then only BBs and BCs were reported killed or damaged.

While at the Battle of Carson, Commodore Saganami in HMS Nike targeted smaller ships starting with DDs in order to cripple or kill as many enemy ships as possible in order to maximize the number of merchantmen that could escape pursuit.

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm - clearly 120 missiles per BC is gross overkill. And arguably the 20 (Mk16 based) ECM birds are enough to almost totally blind/defeat that entire SLN BC squadron's defenses -- 1 out of 100 attack missiles stopped.

In an extreme case would you expect the BCs to do notably better if the salvo was the same 20 dazzlers and dragon's teeth, but only 4 attack birds? On the one hand having to split their first against 100 targets would badly spread the squadron's defenses. On the other, only picking off one missile almost makes it seem like a CM accidentally collided with it, despite being totally spoofed or jammed.
while its stock of dazzlers and dragons teeth lasted a single Roland might actually be able to chip away at that same BC squadron using only its own double-stacked salvos; just by going very ECM heavy on them.


Now you wouldn't expect them to be that effective forever. Sooner or later the SLN is going to improve their ECCM software and sensors and stop being so totally knocked back and baffled by dazzlers and dragons teeth. But in the immediate term they just don't seem able to cope with them.

Rakhmamort wrote:

Vince wrote:The problem for SLN CM point defense is threefold:

1) The speed of incoming DDMs or MDMs (as opposed to the much lower terminal speed of SDMs) makes it much harder to intercept them. See Effective intercept range for counter-missiles.

2) They don't have enough counter-missile tubes to launch and control CMs in the numbers necessary to defeat double-stacked salvos of attack missiles.

3) Their ECCM (ability to see through incoming ECM missiles and accurately identify attack missile threats) is really bad. At the Battle of Saltash, with the very first salvo, the four combined BCs managed exactly one successful counter-missile interception against 100 attack missiles (the other 20 were Dazzler and Dragon's Teeth ECM missiles). One third of the lasers attacked the roof and floor of SLNS Paladin's wedge, the rest got through. The result was the BC was lost with all hands.

And yet an old solly BC with battle damage, crewed with undertrained Monicans managed to take out 30 missiles out of a salvo of 35 Mark 16 missiles.

Shadow of Saganmai, Chapter 58 wrote:"Guns," he said to his youthful acting tactical officer, "your target is the lead bogey. I want double broadsides at twenty-five-second intervals. You can have four tubes in each salvo for Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth. Five salvos on Bogey One, then shift to Bogey Two."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"Ms. Zilwicki, lock the Alpha-Seven array directly to Lieutenant Bagwell." He turned his chair to face the EWO. "These people's defenses are going to be good—very good. We need to hammer them, and to do that we need data on their EW capabilities—fast. The rest of the Squadron will have over ten minutes to engage after they enter their effective powered envelope, but for them to use that time, we need to feed them everything we can pry loose about these people's defensive systems, and our missile range advantage is the only crowbar we have. We need to make them show us their best, people."

***Snip***

The arrow-shaped icons of thirty-five missiles streaked towards his trio of ships, accelerating steadily at 46,000 gravities. Twenty-five seconds later, a second salvo followed. Then a third. A fourth.
"The target is Typhoon," CIC announced as the first counter-missiles went out to meet them, and Horster nodded. Typhoon was his lead ship. He'd expected her to draw the enemy's fire, assuming they weren't stupid enough to divide it among all of his units.

***Snip***

The attack salvo jinked and wove, threading through, past, and around the suddenly dazed and clumsy interceptors which were supposed to have stopped it, then drove past the second wave of CMs, which had already locked onto Abigail's next attack wave. Four of the first wave's birds abruptly wavered, losing lock, veering away as the Monicans' own EW lured them astray. Then a fifth followed them. But thirty held lock, and their closing velocity was so great the defenders had no time to vector yet another wave of counter-missiles onto them.
Then Bogey One's forward laser clusters opened fire.
* * *
This time Janko Horster did swear.
Typhoon's shipboard sensors were less affected by the Manties' infernal jammers than the counter-missiles' seekers had been, but it was painfully obvious they hadn't been unaffected. They fired late, and their solutions were poor. An Indefatigable-class battlecruiser's point defense clusters should have been more than equal to a salvo that size, but she stopped only fourteen of them. The other sixteen got through.
Fortunately, three of the leakers must have been EW platforms. But thirteen laser heads detonated in sequence, so rapidly it looked like one, continuous eruption, directly ahead of Typhoon. The bomb-pumped lasers stabbed straight down the throat of her wedge, unobstructed by any sidewall.
Typhoon's forward hammerhead was massively armored against just such an attack, but not even her armor could shrug off that staccato thunder of stabbing X-ray lasers. It stopped a dozen of them, but another half-dozen blasted straight through it. They knocked out two of her chase missile tubes, one of her chase energy mounts, two counter-missile tubes and a laser cluster. And, far worse, one shattered her forward radar array. It blinded her, put out the eye of her forward missile defenses, and a second wave of attacking missiles was only twenty-five seconds behind.

Shadow of Saganami, Chapter 58 wrote:He watched the plot as Abigail's second double broadside roared into the Monicans' outer defense zone. He saw the instant that its Dazzlers came on-line and the counter-missiles which had been speeding to meet them veered aside. But this time there was time for a follow-on wave of CMs to be vectored onto them. Seventeen of them were intercepted and blotted away, and then the laser clusters began to fire. Another twelve were picked off, but six got through, and Bogey One staggered as more stilettos drilled through her armor.
* * *
Typhoon shuddered as a second wave of X-ray daggers bored through her armor. She should have stopped more of them—all of them—with her lavish anti-missile defenses, but she couldn't see them. Her point defense lasers had become dependent upon relayed tracking reports from Cyclone and Hurricane, and that simply wasn't adequate against targets coming in so fast. Especially not targets as elusive as Manticoran Mark 16 missiles. Fresh damage reports inundated her bridge, and her acceleration faltered as four of her beta nodes blew.
Power surges cascaded through her systems, starting in Impeller One and Laser Three. Automatic circuit breakers stopped most of them, but three of the breakers themselves had been knocked out. Rampant energy surged past them, and a broadside graser's superconductor ring blew, shattering internal bulkheads and adding its own massive power to the surge.
The surge that came roaring down the graser's main feed trunk and straight into Power One.
The untamed torrent of energy thundered into the compartment, and an already nervous petty officer leapt back as his control panel blew up. He fell to the decksole on the seat of his pants as electrical fires danced through the control runs, and an alarm began to scream.

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 30 wrote:When she thought about it, she rather suspected that the commodore was running her harder than he actually had to. For example, there was her present mission. There was absolutely no reason she could think of why the commodore couldn't have simply screened Commander Horace Lynch, Quentin Saint-James' tactical officer, for this particular message. In fact, it probably would have been more efficient. But, no; he'd decided Ensign Zilwicki should trot right on over to the TO's office and deliver it in person. Helen didn't mind the exercise, and the actual message was pretty interesting, but the fact remained that there had been other—and arguably much more efficient—ways for the commodore to deliver it.

***Snip***

"And what can I do for the Commodore this morning, Ms. Zilwicki?" he asked.
"He asked me to bring you this, Sir," she said, placing a chip folio on the corner of his desk. "It's some thoughts he's been having about the new laser head modifications."
"I see." Lynch drew the folio closer to him, but he wasn't looking at it. Instead, he had cocked his head and those sharp brown eyes were studying Helen. "And would it happen that he discussed some of those thoughts with you before he sent you to see me?"
"As a matter of fact, he did say a little something about them," Helen acknowledged a bit cautiously.

***Snip***

"I think we might agree to consider that a prefatory remark," he said gravely. "But with that out of the way, what do you think of them?"
The faint twinkle Helen thought she might have seen in his eyes eased some of her tension, and she felt herself relax a bit in the chair.
"I think they're going to have a very significant tactical impact, Sir," she said. "The Mark 16 is a big enough advantage against other cruisers and battlecruisers as it stands, but with the new laser heads, they're actually going to be able to hurt genuine capital ships, as well." She shook her head. "I don't think the Havenites are going to like that one bit."
"No doubt," Lynch agreed. "Although I trust," he continued more dryly, "that what you've just said doesn't mean you think it's going to be a good idea for a heavy cruiser to take on a superdreadnought, even with the new laser heads?"
"No, Sir. Of course not," Helen said quickly. "I guess I was just thinking about Monica, Sir. If we'd had the new laser heads there, I don't think those battlecruisers would have gotten into their effective range of us in the first place. Or, at least, if they had, they would've had a lot more of the stuffing kicked out of them first."
"Now that, Ms. Zilwicki, is a very valid observation," Lynch said.

***Snip***

But now, thanks primarily to fallout from the Star Kingdom's ongoing emphasis on improving its grav-pulse FTL communications capability, BuWeaps had completed field testing and begun production of a new generation of substantially more powerful gravity generators for the cruiser-weight Mark 16. In fact, they'd almost doubled the grav lens amplification factor, and while they were at it, they'd increased the yield of the missile warhead, as well, which had actually required at least as much ingenuity as the new amplification generators, given the way warheads scaled. They'd had to shift quite a few of the original Mark 16's components around to find a way to shoehorn all of that in, which had included shifting several weapons bus components aft, but Helen didn't expect anyone to complain about the final result. With its fifteen megaton warhead, the Mark 16 had been capable of dealing with heavy cruiser or battlecruiser armor, although punching through to the interior of a battlecruiser had pushed it almost to the limit. Now, with the new Mod G's forty megaton warhead and improved grav lensing, the Mark 16 had very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago.

***Snip***

"And what else did the Commodore discuss with you about them, Ensign Zilwicki?" Lynch's question recalled her from her thoughts, and she gave herself a mental shake.

***Snip***

"All right, Sir," she replied with a smile, settling herself more comfortably in her own chair. "Where were you thinking we should begin?"
Her tone was respectful, but almost challenging, and he smiled back at her as he heard it.
"That's the spirit, Ensign Zilwicki! Let's see . . ."
He swung his chair gently back and forth for a few moments, then nodded to himself.
"You've already mentioned what happened at Monica," he said. "I've read the tac reports from the battle, and I know you were on the bridge during the engagement. In fact, you were acting as missile defense officer, correct?"
"Yes, Sir." Helen's eyes darkened slightly at the memories his question brought back. Memories of her, sitting at Abigail Hearns' side, managing the entire squadron's missile defenses while the Monican-crewed battlecruisers stormed steadily closer.
"In that case, why don't we start with your evaluation of how the availability of the Mod G—or, for that matter, the E-1—would have affected Commodore Terekhov's choice of tactics?"
Helen frowned thoughtfully, the darkness of memory fading as she concentrated on his question. She considered it carefully for several seconds, then gave her head a little toss.
"I think the main change in his tactics might have been that he'd have gone for early kills."
"Meaning what, exactly?" Lynch's tone was an invitation to explain her thinking, and she leaned slightly forward.
"The thing was, Sir, that I think we all knew the only way we could realistically hope to stop those battlecruisers was with massed missile fire at relatively short range. Oh, we got one of them at extreme range, but that had to have been a Golden BB. No way did we manage to get deep enough to hit anything that should have blown her up that way!"
She shook her head again, her expression grim as she recalled the spectacular destruction of MNS Typhoon and her entire crew. Then she shook herself mentally and refocused on the present.
"Anyway, we knew we sure couldn't afford to let them into energy range of us, and because our laser heads were so much lighter, we knew we were going to have to concentrate a lot of hits, both in terms of location and time, if we were going to get through their armor. The Kitty—I mean, Hexapuma—was the only ship we had that was Mark 16-capable, and that meant we couldn't achieve that kind of concentration outside standard missile range. So what the captain was actually using our long-range fire for was to get the best possible feel for the Monicans' active defenses and EW capabilities. He was using the Mark 16s to force them to defend themselves so we could get a read on their defenses and pass it to the rest of the squadron to maximize our fire's effectiveness once they came into the range of the rest of our ships.
"But if we'd had Mod Gs, instead of the old Mod Es, we would have been able to get through battlecruiser armor even at extreme range and without the kind of concentration we had at the end of the battle. So, in that case, I think he still would have been probing for information, but at the same time—"

Vince wrote:That wasn't just one old Solly BC with battle damage and crewed with under-trained Monicans, it was one old Solly BC with battle damage and 2 completely undamaged old Solly BCs, all crewed with under-trained Monicans, but with expert Technodyne tech-reps actually manning the critical offensive and defensive tactical systems (but still taking orders from the Monican Admiral on maneuvering--late turn to open broadside--and what to fire offensively--all attack missiles and no ECM birds in salvos directed against Terekhov's squadron).

Rakhmamort wrote:

Vince wrote:That wasn't just one old Solly BC with battle damage and crewed with under-trained Monicans, it was one old Solly BC with battle damage and 2 completely undamaged old Solly BCs, all crewed with under-trained Monicans, but with expert Technodyne tech-reps actually manning the critical offensive and defensive tactical systems (but still taking orders from the Monican Admiral on maneuvering--late turn to open broadside--and what to fire offensively--all attack missiles and no ECM birds in salvos directed against Terekhov's squadron).

You forgot to add that those 3 BCs had their front hammerheads facing towards the manty force, not their broadsides which had more point defense capabilities. Which means that if they had their broadside defenses facing the RMN ships, those 35-missile salvos might not have even taken out a BC. Which again supports the logic of having a way to radically increase the throw weight of a single ship with the use of control missiles to get thru enemy defenses during emergency situations.

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:Dubroskaya was more willing than Kelvin Diadoro to admit that the Manties tube-launched missiles might have more range than hers, but nothing the size a light cruiser could stow internally was going to have a lot more, she thought as she watched her ships’ icons moving across the display. For that matter, assuming constant accelerations on both sides, it would require only an additional fifteen and a half minutes for her to reach her own powered range of the Manties. Two of her ships—Success and Paladin—were Flight V Indefatigables, with the old SL-11-b launcher, with a forty-five-second launch cycle, but Vanquisher and Inexorable had the newer SL-13 launcher with a cycle time of only thirty-five seconds, and the Manties could probably do a bit better than that. Solarian destroyers and light cruisers certainly could have, given the smaller and lighter missiles with which they were armed, but any internally launched missile with enough range to threaten her squadron at this kind of range was going to have to be at least as large as her own Javelins. That was bound to slow their rate of fire, so call it thirty seconds for the other side’s launch cycle. That meant they’d have time for roughly thirty-one broadsides before she could range on them, but with no more than eight to ten tubes per broadside, that would be only three hundred and ten missiles, maximum, per platform, delivered in combined salvos of no more than fifty each. And as Diadoro had pointed out, at least some of those missiles were going to have to be configured as penetration aids and electronic warfare platforms. Her four battlecruisers mounted eight counter-missile tubes and sixteen point defense stations in each broadside, which gave the squadron thirty-two CMs and sixty-four laser clusters against a probable threat of no more than forty shipkillers per launch.
She smiled coldly, contemplating the plot. No cruiser-sized missile ever built was going to get through that strong a defense in sufficient numbers to stop her before she was able to bring her own tubes into action, and her ships mounted twenty-eight of them in each broadside. Once she got into range, she’d be firing salvos of a hundred and sixteen missiles each . . . at which point her heavier Javelins would reduce the Manties to drifting wreckage in quick order.