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Attack missles

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Attack missles
Post by Maldorian   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:36 am

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I was thinking about the attack missles in the Honorverse. The Honorverse Warheads are nuklear warheads. You throw them directly a nuke on the head or use their power to energize a laser warhead.

In reality we have also nuclear weapons, nothing new for all of you. The Point is: "The most nuclear missles currently used have multiple nuclear warheads!"
A possible answer is: "The Targets in Honorverse are all armored, so you need the biggest warhead you can get and these are to big to carry more than on with a missle!"

A possible answer! But would it still count? The missles getting bigger and bigger, and so the possible payload should increase, too! The other side is, your giant missles eat a lot of space at your ships. If you can use a missle to carry more than one warhead you use your space on the ship more effective. Warheads are far smaller than missles.

Let´s think about it!
We use a Manticorian 3 Level MK23 Missle. We take every Level of the missle and cut the size of a warhead of the Engine Level. We engeneering a new missle with the new size. The question is: "How old are the MK23 missles?" If they have some years in service, tere are a good chance, that you could create a missle with the smaller size, but the same or even higher power than the old MK23 engine Level. At the end we would have a new missle with the size of a MK23 but with 4 warheads, make the fire power of 4 missles but only the size of one missle.
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Re: Attack missles
Post by Duckk   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:51 am

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The MIRV concept isn't exactly new for the denizens of the Honorverse. The problem is the tactical picture makes throwing contact nukes rather pointless. You still have to get all those nukes into very close range, whereas a laser head missile has some stand off range.
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Re: Attack missles
Post by The E   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:59 am

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Yeah, modern Honorverse laser heads use the nuke as a strong, high-impulse power source for their actual payload (the lasing rods). Getting nuke hits onto a hull is pretty much impossible against modern ships (as in, the only times we've seen it work were in highly irregular circumstances, and even when it did, it was not a decisive hit).
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Re: Attack missles
Post by Brigade XO   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:27 am

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In the present Honorverse tactical situation, MIRV warheads don't make much sense in anti-ship weapons. The laser head takes the energy of the warhead and focuses it into multiple energy beams to cut through the target rather than hoping that the actual blast of the warhead can damage the ship- hopefully thought a contact detonation.

I suppose it is always possible to try and build a submunitions warhead but that has some drawbacks.

The 1st that comes to mind is then having smaller individual warheads (and fewer lasing rods) for each submunition. Given that you are essentualy lowering the size & yield of the individual warheads, you appear to be defeating the purpose of having a "capital ship" warhead designed to defeat the likes of DN and SD armor etc. Might work if you are engaging lighter ships- perhaps CA and lighter but why cripple you weapon system.

The 2nd is that, while you end up more individual targets for the counter missile systems to identify and defeat, you complicate the control needs because each submunition is going to need to be able to both spread out from it's carrier body and then individualy orient on it's target. At that point I don't see where you are going to get powered flight to spread the submunitions to a) avoid countermeasures/ continue on to positions on targets and b) get out of the kill zone of the counter missiles aready targeted on your capital ship missile. While you may have some attitude capabilty on each submunition, it would seem to be essentilly a ballistic weapon at that point. Where in the flight cycle are you going to release the MIRVs from the powerd flight vehicle? Is there enough trade-off of potentialy more hits from lower energy through the rods comming in from slightly different angles on the target to justify this- and how many submuntions could you cram into the last stage of a M-23?
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Re: Attack missles
Post by munroburton   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:43 pm

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This is a MK23 missile.

http://img15.deviantart.net/babc/i/2014 ... 7pa3gf.jpg

Right at the back is the drive section, with all three impeller rings. The green cylinders are the lasing rods.

I'm pretty sure the section between the rods and the rings is the microfusion reactor and fuel, as well as the main computer.

The warhead is at the tip. The warhead is the smallest primary component of the missile.

IIRC, Haven does use a larger warhead on its missiles. This is to compensate for their less efficient lasing rod systems and lower hit probabilities.

The Katana LAC is also equipped with a single-warhead-single-rod missile but this is only intended to kill other LACs.

IMO, if you're seeking a heavier punch missile, I'd be looking at grasers instead of bomb-pumped lasers or contact nukes. Grasers would have a greater stand-off range and more destructive potential, as demonstrated by the Alignment's graser torpedo. Unfortunately, we figure the smallest a graser can be made is 3,000-5,000 tons, which makes it around the size of a pod.

Every time size goes up, ammo capacity goes down. They might not fit currently deployed launchers(in both pods and ships).
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Re: Attack missles
Post by George J. Smith   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:06 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:In the present Honorverse tactical situation, MIRV warheads don't make much sense in anti-ship weapons. The laser head takes the energy of the warhead and focuses it into multiple energy beams to cut through the target rather than hoping that the actual blast of the warhead can damage the ship- hopefully thought a contact detonation.
snip


I think I can see a use for MIRV, how about targeting deployed missile pods with stealth enabled MIRV missiles.

Surely with the emphasis on pod launched missiles some way of getting more proximity kills would be useful.
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Re: Attack missles
Post by kzt   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 4:07 pm

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No, the warhead is about 1/3 of the way back from the tip. The front of the missile has the laser rods and sensors. Behind the warhead it's all propulsion related.
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Re: Attack missles
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:15 pm

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munroburton wrote:This is a MK23 missile.

http://img15.deviantart.net/babc/i/2014 ... 7pa3gf.jpg

Right at the back is the drive section, with all three impeller rings. The green cylinders are the lasing rods.
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According to that illustration, a Mk23 has 12 lasing rods. It seems to me that fulfills your desire for a "MIRV" warhead. Each lasing rod is an independent "aiming device" for a portion of the Nuclear Explosion of the warhead, thereby multiplying the chance of a hit by twelve.

Theoretically, each lasing rod could orient on a different target but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having so many lasing rods in the first place.
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Re: Attack missles
Post by MaxxQ   » Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:09 am

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kzt wrote:No, the warhead is about 1/3 of the way back from the tip. The front of the missile has the laser rods and sensors. Behind the warhead it's all propulsion related.


The actual warhead is the spherical object just behind the cone (forward sensor/telemetry array). It's surrounded by wedge-shaped gravitic focusing arrays for concentrating more of the energy from the nuke forward of the missile, to achieve higher energy output from the laserheads.

Yes, I know you know all this kzt... was just mentioning it for anyone who might not exactly know.

Weird Harold wrote:
munroburton wrote:This is a MK23 missile.

http://img15.deviantart.net/babc/i/2014 ... 7pa3gf.jpg

Right at the back is the drive section, with all three impeller rings. The green cylinders are the lasing rods.
...


According to that illustration, a Mk23 has 12 lasing rods. It seems to me that fulfills your desire for a "MIRV" warhead. Each lasing rod is an independent "aiming device" for a portion of the Nuclear Explosion of the warhead, thereby multiplying the chance of a hit by twelve.

Theoretically, each lasing rod could orient on a different target but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having so many lasing rods in the first place.


Actually Harold, you may wish to count again. There's only ten laserheads.

<shameless plug>For more images like that - and videos - check the links in my sig</shameless plug> <---for folks who haven't seen my work yet.
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Re: Attack missles
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Sat Nov 28, 2015 2:04 am

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There's absolutely no point to a MIRV warhead in Honorverse weapons. The reason we have MIRVs is that one missile can throw more than enough boom to kill whatever it's aimed at. Thus you break that boom into pieces and distribute it over multiple targets.

Since one Honorverse missile is not overkill there's no reason for a MIRV.


The one change I think should happen is a partial shift back to contact weapons. They were abandoned because they couldn't survive the withering fire from the laser clusters--but now a three stage GA missile at maximum range is crossing that zone at .8 lights or so--from it's current standoff to impact is at best a fifth of a second. This is well under the cycle time of the laser clusters, it only gives the defender at best one additional shot at the incoming missile and it very well might not give them any.

On the flip side one missile at contact range kills the target, period--the warhead is totally irrelevant in this and it shouldn't even be fired. This also means the dazzlers--which carry no warhead at all serve no purpose at that point other than being decoys can carry out this attack. Likewise, the Apollo control missiles are useless once their controlled missiles are spent.

You don't want only contact missiles because you won't always have the kind of speed needed to pull it off and not all missiles will be able to hit anyway. (A laser head can hit a ship with a turned wedge, a contact missile can't.)
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