"downrange countermissiles"

We've trashed this more than a few times, but I couldn't find the old thread, and while reading Shadow of Freedom, I had what is for me a new thought on the "CM" extended range issue.

The thought was that following the initial "missile exchange", a navy with surviving podlayers still has to eject more pods. So a "stream approach" to a downrange defensive missile might have three or four tiny CM's per DDM or MDM booster to target pods with their wedges. Granted that's only a few second window, but it's a smaller target area at the speed of a starship and at a much smaller ratio to C, not an attack missile, and it's a still 8 to 14:1 countering ratio.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:We've trashed this more than a few times, but I couldn't find the old thread, and while reading Shadow of Freedom, I had what is for me a new thought on the "CM" extended range issue.

The thought was that following the initial "missile exchange", a navy with surviving podlayers still has to eject more pods. So a "stream approach" to a downrange defensive missile might have three or four tiny CM's per DDM or MDM booster to target pods with their wedges. Granted that's only a few second window, but it's a smaller target area at the speed of a starship and at a much smaller ratio to C, not an attack missile, and it's a still 8 to 14:1 countering ratio.

Thoughts?

The details from MAXQQ showed that there wasn't enough room in the warhead bay of an MDM for 3-4 CMs - 3-4 CM usually fill the shipkiller missile sized sabot used when CMs are fired from standard broadside missile tubes.

An MDM may push 1 ....maybe 2 CMs down range as cargo in place of the warhead, but there will be no targeting information for them from the mothership, so their interception rate will be ... poor, to say the least.

SharkHunter wrote:We've trashed this more than a few times, but I couldn't find the old thread, and while reading Shadow of Freedom, I had what is for me a new thought on the "CM" extended range issue.

The thought was that following the initial "missile exchange", a navy with surviving podlayers still has to eject more pods. So a "stream approach" to a downrange defensive missile might have three or four tiny CM's per DDM or MDM booster to target pods with their wedges. Granted that's only a few second window, but it's a smaller target area at the speed of a starship and at a much smaller ratio to C, not an attack missile, and it's a still 8 to 14:1 countering ratio.

Thoughts?

Pods are supposed to be quite vulnerable to proximity kills from nearby nukes. I think if you were trying to kill pods in the interval,between when they were rolled and when they launched you'd be better off using some of your current attack missiles in "boom" mode. Each would probably kill pods in, at least, hundreds of times more volume than the wedge on a cm.

Plus they don't need to actually see the fairly stealthy pods because they don't need a near-direct hit. Oh and a cm is something like 30+% the size of a MDM, not exactly tiny compared to them. (I guess you might be able to build a smaller impeller powered submunitions, more like a man portable SAM. But it wouldn't hav the range/endurance to reach to pods if launched beyond laserhead standoff range...

Basically I think there's a reason this tactic isn't tried, and micro-CMs isn't how you'd best try it anyway. But interesting thought.

Pods I believe are considered relatively expendable. The big concern is them not getting the chance to fire off their missiles. You will not be rolling your pods unless believe you have the time to fire their missiles off.

It might conceivably work, but IMO would not be worthwhile to reduce your offensive missile storage on something that won't always be needed, and attack missiles can easily kill pods.

Here are a couple of other ideas:
1. Have a missile pod that instead of 10 MDM's, has 50 CM's.
2. set up a recon drone so that it can tow a 7 missile CM canister. Be easy to pick off slow moving missiles that have recently been fired.

SharkHunter wrote:We've trashed this more than a few times, but I couldn't find the old thread, and while reading Shadow of Freedom, I had what is for me a new thought on the "CM" extended range issue.

The thought was that following the initial "missile exchange", a navy with surviving podlayers still has to eject more pods. So a "stream approach" to a downrange defensive missile might have three or four tiny CM's per DDM or MDM booster to target pods with their wedges. Granted that's only a few second window, but it's a smaller target area at the speed of a starship and at a much smaller ratio to C, not an attack missile, and it's a still 8 to 14:1 countering ratio.

Thoughts?

I've actually been waiting for someone to just start firing what amounts to all-up pods for a MIRV type missile attack. Maybe I've just been watching a little bit too many re-runs of Andromeda tv show though.



After Manticore designed the Apollo control birds, which is what, between two and three times the size of a standard missile bird, just to fit in the short-ranged two-way FTL comms, is there's really a difference between something that's just a control bird, and something that launches multiple independent nukes with a small cluster of lasing rods?


I'm thinking something that falls somewhere between a Viper's 1 lasing rod, and the older Ferret missiles that had a few rods. A counter-missile is clearly small enough to be fitted to Solarian destroyer missiles, even if it bumps their size to cruiser-weight. And with the way Manticore has been pushing their miniaturization technology they probably could get something that MIRV's three, perhaps four warheads in the size of something approximately Apollo sized. 5 Apollo birds would fit into a standard-size pod, 1 for your FTL control, leaving 4 brids that might give upto 12 warheads which is 50% better than current Apollo pods do. Mod-G warhead would be the best blend of size to firepower.



And to somewhat wrench myself back to staying relatively on topic, the same technique would work for slinging CM's downrange too. You could use the standard broadside canister missile's refitted to MDM status, and with Apollo giving almost real-time conditions at time of launch, those CM's would be capable of intercepting hostile missiles almost the moment they're emerging from the sidewalls, or unfired pods bobbing behind the ship.

Somtaaw wrote:And to somewhat wrench myself back to staying relatively on topic, the same technique would work for slinging CM's downrange too. You could use the standard broadside canister missile's refitted to MDM status, and with Apollo giving almost real-time conditions at time of launch, those CM's would be capable of intercepting hostile missiles almost the moment they're emerging from the sidewalls, or unfired pods bobbing behind the ship.

As I understand it, the Apollo Control missie is soo large as it needs the room for the FTL comm. There is very little room left over, but enough that additional molycircs can be installed to make it smarter than ever before. I don't think there will be room for even one CM on a Apollo Control missile, because if there was, then you could then you would put a warhead there instead for the regular missiles.

I think his idea is that the pod has a apollo comm missile and a couple of the modified CM mdms. nothing will be removed from the apollo comm missile itself

with a only a few software tweeks you could probably use the already very good AI to give the CM fired with it to take out some enemy missiles.

not sure if it'd do as much as a human controlled CM but if it removes (assume we get 3 cm per missile and 4 of these with an apollo) 50% that is still 6 missiles which don't need close range CM or PDL used on them, thus freeing up processor and human time to focus on more tricky ones. and that is per pod. even at a very pessimistic 25% sucess that 3 missiles per pod.

huge increase over standard CM or PDL? maybe not but even the option of removing SOME at much earlier stage would be useful. say if you can catch a catphract just before it activates its high speed CM drive.

Dauntless wrote:I think his idea is that the pod has a apollo comm missile and a couple of the modified CM mdms. nothing will be removed from the apollo comm missile itself

with a only a few software tweeks you could probably use the already very good AI to give the CM fired with it to take out some enemy missiles.

not sure if it'd do as much as a human controlled CM but if it removes (assume we get 3 cm per missile and 4 of these with an apollo) 50% that is still 6 missiles which don't need close range CM or PDL used on them, thus freeing up processor and human time to focus on more tricky ones. and that is per pod. even at a very pessimistic 25% sucess that 3 missiles per pod.

huge increase over standard CM or PDL? maybe not but even the option of removing SOME at much earlier stage would be useful. say if you can catch a catphract just before it activates its high speed CM drive.

Doesn't an Apollo pod attack one ship at a time? Would the ACM have enough processing power to get a dozen or two of CMs to attack that many single small targets? If it can get enough of a hit rate, then it might be a way to extend the CM basket. But you would need a at least a second drive for the CM, so would it still fit 2 CMs per regular MDM?

Kizarvexis wrote: Would the ACM have enough processing power to get a dozen or two of CMs to attack that many single small targets?

A hand calculator from 20 years ago has more than enough "processing power"