Delayed CM activation

Delayed CM activation:

Typical engagement:
1)Closing, one flips your ships/task force to keep the engagement open longer and giving you more options for engagement.
2) Chase: Accelerating away from an enemy or towards.

We know missiles can delay their wedge activation right? We also know that the number of CM's launched compared to ability to launch offensive tractored pods is less.

Assuming one does not have a control link limitation(upgrade etc), why could a ship, in the two scenarios above, not simply fire off an enormous number of CM's and let them drift with their initial velocity before activation. After all in #1, both defending and attacking ships are accelerating towards a 0-0 engagement and therefore any initial velocity imparted by firing the CM's will be greater than that of the ship. In scenario #2, only the one fleeing can use delay activation CM's.

Why is this not already done? It is not as if they are not already using these tactics for dropping off pods since tSVW. Is the reason this is not done ONLY due to limited CM control links?

Discuss: How long can a missile coast before it must activate its wedge. Why would one not implement this multiplication factor for the number of CM's launched. Space is an enormous place. It is not as if these CM's are going to be running into each other and it is not as if you, the launchee, do not know where they all are.

Effectively you could start launching CM's as soon as you thought they were going to launch. Say when you saw them deploy donkies full of pods.

Likewise ships with FAR greater magazines for CM's could drift these CM's out to the forward deployed LAC's.

*** Math *** Ships accel 500g. If you only wanted your CM's to be 500,000km in front of your ship via differential drift, then you have 7.5 min to fire off CM's or ~55 salvos in 8s/salvo.

[Range will be greater due to tube initial velocity, thus a better match for forward deployed LAC's]

Relax wrote:Effectively you could start launching CM's as soon as you thought they were going to launch. Say when you saw them deploy donkies full of pods.

Well, that wouldn't be fair. It would be like shooting MDM's at them to blow up their donkeys via the mystical soft kills instead of just waiting to die with 80% of your ammo unused.

Relax wrote:Why is this not already done? It is not as if they are not already using these tactics for dropping off pods since tSVW. Is the reason this is not done ONLY due to limited CM control links?

Well, there is that control link limitation, and whatever any of us think of it, I doubt it is going away. Until it does, there's one reason not to spill out vast numbers of CM's so there's no need to explain not doing so in the meantime.

Still, CM's that coast initially would get more range so there's reason to explain why not do that for that purpose. You still wouldn't be dumping huge numbers this way, mind you. I think the reasons shipkiller missiles aren't fired this way often are, first, too much vulnerability to being sent off on a course that will not intercept an enemy moving on an unpredictable course, and second, how much time they can suffer particle impacts at whatever high velocity relative to system crud without a wedge up.

CM's would suffer even worse from drifting away from predictable target courses, since the shipkillers can accelerate so much faster than ships do. If there's any reason to think there are CM's drifting ballistically toward your missiles, you'll program them for more extreme maneuvers to avoid them - and if the enemy can and will do that, the defender has plenty of reason not to bother to fire off initially ballistic CM's. Being so much smaller - essentially a powerful impeller wedge with some guidance systems - the CM's are likely more vulnerable to particle impacts than the shipkillers. While they could presumably be built a bit larger and a bit more expensive to get more particle screening without the wedge up, size and price are dear expenses for a CM and the designers may not believe it's worth it.

JeffEngel wrote:Well, there is that control link limitation, and whatever any of us think of it, I doubt it is going away. Until it does, there's one reason not to spill out vast numbers of CM's so there's no need to explain not doing so in the meantime.

Yes, we're shown, as recently as the battle of Solon that Manti ships could fire more waves of CMs than they could control.

And RFC has said that the control links for CMs are shorter ranged than the (larger) ones for anti=ship missiles; so there's a limit to how far you could extend a CMs total range by coasting. OTOH older ships seem to adapt to Mk31s (56% greater range) without having to pull and replace CM control links. So there's some excess range capability; probably up to the 3 million km range we're told the lag gets too bad for effective CM control.

So we know why new ships don't tend to do this; they (or at least the SD(P)s) can saturate their control link limitation without doing this.

It also occurs to me that CMs coasting are vulnerable to those proximity soft=kills the books keep mentioning. So you don't want to coast out more than you'd fire off before the 1st wave of incoming reaches standoff range (IOW it's useful more against an initial alpha-strike than a sustained fight -- if you tried to coast out half your CM magazine to light a small percentage off against each of many successive waves, most would be destroyed before you could use them)
But that limitation isn't an issue in the early towed-pod days of the 1st war; since you'd expend any coasting missiles against the single pod salvo that starts the fight...

There's several major problems with this idea;
Firstly - the ships own manoeuvres will mean that the CMs will be wasted as they will probably being going ballistic on the wrong vector
Secondly - The CMs don't carry a lot of fuel for manoeuvring without the wedge, so once you link up to them they may not be actually able to modify their flight profile to carryout an interception (linked to point 1)
Thirdly - The CMs sensors are myopic compared to the launching ships so would still need to be told what to attack, confirm lock etc. all with the light speed limit meaning very slow response cycle this also linked to the heavy EM environment that now exists
Fourthly - The CMs would need to clear the launch ships operational area, which requires the wedge especially with the RMN off-bore capability and fighting with the wedge towards the target
Fifthly - Space isn't empty and ballistic CMs would be vulnerable to deterioration and destruction, especially the sensors making it even harder for them to target the missiles
Sixthly - Could the launching ship even find the ballistic CMs to get a telemetry link?

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Well, there is that control link limitation, and whatever any of us think of it, I doubt it is going away. Until it does, there's one reason not to spill out vast numbers of CM's so there's no need to explain not doing so in the meantime.

Yes, we're shown, as recently as the battle of Solon that Manti ships could fire more waves of CMs than they could control.

That has a major caveat. All of those CM's were being used off of a single keyhole. So, clearly there are at least double the control links available even on current gen ships. Only limitation is the computer hardware inside the ship.

Now use your broadside and the number of control links triples over that of a single Keyhole for initial engagement. Roll down if you have to. 2 Keyholes and 1 Broadside(triples).

Of course the RMN can ditch the dedicated control link as an obsolete way of wasting your bandwidth.
"Upgrade" to 1960's tech and the introduction of PCM, lets not even talk Digital yet...

JeffEngel wrote:

Relax wrote:Why is this not already done? It is not as if they are not already using these tactics for dropping off pods since tSVW. Is the reason this is not done ONLY due to limited CM control links?

Well, there is that control link limitation, and whatever any of us think of it, I doubt it is going away. Until it does, there's one reason not to spill out vast numbers of CM's so there's no need to explain not doing so in the meantime.

Still, CM's that coast initially would get more range so there's reason to explain why not do that for that purpose. You still wouldn't be dumping huge numbers this way, mind you. I think the reasons shipkiller missiles aren't fired this way often are, first, too much vulnerability to being sent off on a course that will not intercept an enemy moving on an unpredictable course, and second, how much time they can suffer particle impacts at whatever high velocity relative to system crud without a wedge up.

CM's would suffer even worse from drifting away from predictable target courses, since the shipkillers can accelerate so much faster than ships do. If there's any reason to think there are CM's drifting ballistically toward your missiles, you'll program them for more extreme maneuvers to avoid them - and if the enemy can and will do that, the defender has plenty of reason not to bother to fire off initially ballistic CM's. Being so much smaller - essentially a powerful impeller wedge with some guidance systems - the CM's are likely more vulnerable to particle impacts than the shipkillers. While they could presumably be built a bit larger and a bit more expensive to get more particle screening without the wedge up, size and price are dear expenses for a CM and the designers may not believe it's worth it.

@Jeff/Garth: EDIT: Drift down below: Besides, CM's just go to coordinates mother ship supplies then terminal maneuver on their own sensors.

Drifting at 0.05c, is not a problem for sensors degradation. Apollo pod MK-23 birds got their shrouds due to coasting along at 0.7c.

Proximity "soft kills" have to be within a hundred km or so even under RFC's nukes. Sphere ~100km in diameter.

Start: Yes, opponents know there are ballistic CM's out there headed their way. Do they actually know where they are? Would even an RMN FTL RD be able to track em?

We are talking alpha strike reduction. You and your friends, are 100% certifiably dead if you do not kill the incoming missiles so, honestly, who cares if you lose half of your CM's? Otherwise you only fire off 1% of them under "normal" circumstances. Still means you got many times more CM's into space keeping your butt alive, instead of dead.

Lets talk task force level fight here. CM's will be thick enough to "walk on". CM's will be spread at least 10km away from the nearest so they can activate their wedges. Actually must be greater than this by a large extent.

Our battle space front is well over a LS for dodge maneuvers by incoming MDM's. 300,000km. Besides under alpha strike the MDM's also must not fratricide. Lets start with a single LS, diameter circle of ballistic missiles. If 10km spacing on CM's/MDM's going ballistic... That SINGLE wave of CM's/MDM's for spacing would total

Area/Spacing = r^2PI / 10km*10km

Single wave on 10km spacing would be a "measly" 706million......

Yea, somehow I do not think we have to worry about "proximity soft kills" taking out more than a mere pittance of CM's, unless you are beyond stupid and clump them all together so closely you cannot even light off their drives.

Regarding not being able to shoot both broadsides ballistically: My initial thought was you would get all broadsides. Since I did not do the math, lets take a very simple WAG

Lets say initial launcher is 10km/s. 7.5 minutes 450s.

Drift is a whopping total of 4500km... Lets not laugh ourselves silly on this one.

Increase power of 10 obtains launch velocity of 100km/s and a drift of 45,000km. Lets still not laugh ourselves silly on this one when the CM's range, even ancient CM's, is 1Mkm.

So, yes, indeed, we do get BOTH broadsides.

EDIT: So, if drift is 45,000km (add in ship initial spacing) on a cicular salvo front with a minimum of 10km spacing between CM's. We can now "only" have 15MILLION CM's on such a spacing. If CM's have a 100km spacing, IE single MDM goes for a proximity "soft kill", then "only" 160,000CM's can be spaced that way. Of course space is 3d so, 100km behind that wave of 160,000 CM's is ANOTHER wave of 160,000.

MDM's trying to prox soft kill is beyond stupid. Now maybe if they had a 1000km kill radius(beyond absurd, but hey so are RFC's 1950's control links)

Garth 2 wrote:Sixthly - Could the launching ship even find the ballistic CMs to get a telemetry link?

What are we doing here, flailing around in space, blindly trying to grab hold of a whipping power cord?

Are we still communicating to the Voyager spacecraft that just exited the SOLAR SYSTEM?