Extended range missiles

I have seen references that extended range missiles exist.

I can't find anything about their performance.

Can anyone direct me to where the performance data is on extended range shipkiller missiles?

darrell wrote:I have seen references that extended range missiles exist.

I can't find anything about their performance.

Can anyone direct me to where the performance data is on extended range shipkiller missiles?

Lerm and Erm missiles are old school capacitor missiles with about 16km Powered range single stage. The Cataphract is the Lerm and Erm equivalent dual staged missiles, capacitor based that the league and MAlignment have. They are based on a standard missile with a CM stage fired at half power giving double CM range. These also have a full powered range of about 16km, but with the ballistic phase option.

darrell wrote:I have seen references that extended range missiles exist.

I can't find anything about their performance.

Can anyone direct me to where the performance data is on extended range shipkiller missiles?

Skimpy's first sentence is accurate. The rest of his post is misleading.

The Light Extended Range Missile is the destroyer and light cruiser weight missile. Other than range, it is apparently the same otherwise.

The Extended Range Missile is the Heavy Cruiser/Battle Cruiser weight missile -- replaced by the MK-16 in newer construction. The Battle of Monica has a discussion of the comparative ranges of ERM and Mk-16.

ETA: There's not as much info as I thought:

Shadow of Saganami
Chapter Fifty-eight wrote:The only advantage he still had was the reach of Hexapuma's internal launchers, and the geometry of the looming engagement did much to neutralize even that. The range was down to 30.9 million kilometers, and with the battlecruisers' overtake advantage of 38,985 KPS, Hexapuma's maximum powered envelope at launch was increased to almost thirty-seven million kilometers. Assuming the battlecruisers' shipboard missile performance approximated ONI's estimates, their range would be under fifteen million kilometers, despite their overtake, but at present velocities and accelerations, they would enter that range of him within another 6.3 minutes and enter energy range eleven minutes after that. Warlock would also have a slight range advantage over the Monican battlecruisers, but it wasn't great enough to change the tactical equation significantly. Her tubes were simply too small; she couldn't handle even the Mark 14 missiles the Saganami-Bs had been designed to fire, much less a Saganami-C's Mark 16s, so her advantage would be little more than three million kilometers—barely seventy-five seconds at the Monicans' rate of closure.

Weird Harold wrote:

darrell wrote:I have seen references that extended range missiles exist.

I can't find anything about their performance.

Can anyone direct me to where the performance data is on extended range shipkiller missiles?

Skimpy's first sentence is accurate. The rest of his post is misleading.

The Light Extended Range Missile is the destroyer and light cruiser weight missile. Other than range, it is apparently the same otherwise.

The Extended Range Missile is the Heavy Cruiser/Battle Cruiser weight missile -- replaced by the MK-16 in newer construction. The Battle of Monica has a discussion of the comparative ranges of ERM and Mk-16.

ETA: There's not as much info as I thought:

If we assume the ERM has the same accel as the other then-current RMN missiles 92,000g/46,000g we can calculate the run-time they need to hit ~16 million km.
Rounding it up to an "even" or "attractive" number, we get a 90s/270s run time and 3.6/16.6 million km.
I wouldn't take that as cannon, but given the range we've seen ERMs reach they've got to have run times in excess of 75s (or else they're the quickest missiles in space )

Cataphracts on the other hand Duckk was kind enough to provide hard numbers on, so we know exactly what those are.
1st stage 180s @50% power (47600g)
2nd (CM) stage 75s @100% power (98000)

The odd thing is that the SLN CM drive have enhanced endurance, but they're not much quicker than the shipkillers. RFC has said in the past that the trade-off for the quicker accel of the CMs is that their drives can't be stepped down. Though I guess it's possible that the SLN dropped the max accel as a design time tradeoff to get the extra 15 seconds of endurance. But at runtime I assume they still can't selected a lower accel to further increase that range.

Thanks for the information. Because it looked like there was a lot of conflicting information, I thought I should look for myself. I did e-book searches for the word missile on every published book. some books had the word "missile(s)" hundreds of times.

In the first 6 books, (OBS, HotQ, SVW, FoD, FiE, HAE)
1. All give DD & BC missiles as 85KG's, = 6.75Mkm
2. All give CM's 92K G's, SVW gives CM range as less than 1Mkm -- 45 seconds @ 92Kg's is 913,802km.
3. The peep ground based missiles supplied to masada in HotQ were 85KG's for 140 seconds.
4. No book gave the acceleration of SD missiles, but based on peep ground based missiles I would guess that pre MDM SD manty missiles were also 85Kg's.

IEH, the capacitor MDM's were the first shipkiller missiles with 92Kg's acceleration, and that is the same acceleration for all Manty DD, BC, DDM & MDM missiles from that point on.

Vipers and Mk 31 CM's have 3.6Mkm range. could not find an acceleration or an endurance figure. IMO the most likely possibility is: 92Kg's @90 seconds = 3,655,206km. The next logical step down in time is: 130Kg's @ 75 seconds = 3,586,781km

The BC missiles supplied to monica are not standard solly issue.

Quote SoS
"even the best Solarian missiles had a maximum powered attack envelope of no more than 6.5 million kilometers from rest,"

41Kg's for 180 seconds = 6,515,802 km = 82Kg's for 60 seconds. Slower and shorter legged, just like peep missiles, and the peeps got SL tech transfers. Possibly one of those transfers was how to build better missiles.

The ERM's fired at the battle of monica by manticore had an endurance of 225 seconds = 75 seconds @ 92Kg's = 11,422,519km from rest. remember that both forces were approaching each other, and that is the reason that rang was longer.

The BC missiles mesa/technodyne supplied monica also had 75/225 second drives and roughly equal range as both sides started firing within seconds of each other, or somewhere between 11Mkm and 12Mkm range.

Quote: Torch of freedom:
and he had to admit that the Cataphracts in his battlecruisers' magazines

indicates that Monica's BC missiles are Cataphracts. Remember that monica's Cataphracts had 225 second drive time and a range from rest of 11.5Mkm plus or minus a few hundred thousand.

Quote: Torch of freedom:
Of course, the downside for them is that they're going to have standard SLN counter-missiles in the tubes—and the canisters—and they aren't as good as ours.

Manticore CM's at 92KG's, 45 seconds are better than Peep CM's, which are better than Solly CM's. This makes it highly unlikely that solly CM's could be 75 seconds at 98Kg's. IMO the most likely possibility is that Johnathan_S didn't get the quote from Duckk right. If that is the case, IMO the most logical probability is that solly CM's are 45 seconds @ 88Kg's. distance= 874,071km from rest.

Quote: Torch of freedom:
Commander Raycraft's head jerked around in astonishment. That couldn't be right! Hammer Force was still eleven million kilometers from the enemy!

If we have a 180 second missile drive at 44Kg's plus a 45 second CM drive at 88K G's, that is 225 seconds and a powered range from rest of 11,362,923Km, which is almost exactly what was observed in both Monica and torch.

darrell wrote:Vipers and Mk 31 CM's have 3.6Mkm range. could not find an acceleration or an endurance figure. IMO the most likely possibility is: 92Kg's @90 seconds = 3,655,206km. The next logical step down in time is: 130Kg's @ 75 seconds = 3,586,781km

No, the next logical step is that CM drives got the same improvements as ship-killer drives: 92KG/85KG * 92KG = 99.5KG

darrell wrote:The ERM's fired at the battle of monica by manticore had an endurance of 225 seconds = 75 seconds @ 92Kg's = 11,422,519km from rest. remember that both forces were approaching each other, and that is the reason that rang was longer.

I'm not sure how much more range Warlock had but Warlock fired one salvo and the rest fired "shortly thereafter" -- probably with Warlock's second double broadside. The closing velocity between the Monican BCs and Terekhov's ships closed the distance by Warlock's range advantage in the 18 seconds (or so) between salvos for Warlock.

darrell wrote:The BC missiles mesa/technodyne supplied monica also had 75/225 second drives and roughly equal range as both sides started firing within seconds of each other, or somewhere between 11Mkm and 12Mkm range.

"Within seconds" covers a lot of distance at relavistic closing velocities; the entire 11Mkm from their first missiles to there wreckage passing Terekov's ships was "within seconds."

darrell wrote:The BC missiles supplied to monica are not standard solly issue.

darrell wrote:Quote: Torch of freedom:
and he had to admit that the Cataphracts in his battlecruisers' magazines

indicates that Monica's BC missiles are Cataphracts. Remember that monica's Cataphracts had 225 second drive time and a range from rest of 11.5Mkm plus or minus a few hundred thousand. The BC missiles supplied to monica are not standard solly issue.

Your conflating two different battles with two different sets of missile types. As far as can be determined, Monica was provided with current SLN (FF) equipment including missiles.

darrell wrote:Quote: Torch of freedom:
Commander Raycraft's head jerked around in astonishment. That couldn't be right! Hammer Force was still eleven million kilometers from the enemy!

If we have a 180 second missile drive at 44Kg's plus a 45 second CM drive at 88K G's, that is 225 seconds and a powered range from rest of 11,362,923Km, which is almost exactly what was observed in both Monica and torch.

In the battle of Torch, it is made abundantly clear that Adm Roszak(sp?) closed a great deal closer than he had to; to just outside the range he assumed the PNE was capable of.

The range figures for Monica were NOT "From rest" but with a relativistic closing velocity. The ranges in the battle of Torch were shorter than either side was actually capable of.

darrell wrote:Manticore CM's at 92KG's, 45 seconds are better than Peep CM's, which are better than Solly CM's. This makes it highly unlikely that solly CM's could be 75 seconds at 98Kg's. IMO the most likely possibility is that Johnathan_S didn't get the quote from Duckk right. If that is the case, IMO the most logical probability is that solly CM's are 45 seconds @ 88Kg's. distance= 874,071km from rest.

Here's the actual quote from page 3 of Forcing a Roland to Withdraw

Duckk wrote:Cataphracts go 467 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 961 for 75.

I did convert the KPS into Gs; since that how the rest of my missile spreadsheet works with them.

961 km/s^2 * 1000 = 961,000 m/s^2
961000 m/s^2 / 9.8 m/s^2 = 98,061.22449g

(Or if, as RFC seems to do you use 10 m/s^s as an Honorverse galactic standard g, 96,100g)



Also in you list of missile engagements I didn't see you mentioned HMS Jessica Epps' fight in War of Honor. That was over 15 million km using ERMs...

Remember there are two types of Cataphracts, the tube launched version that will fire out of standard or slightly modified tubes and the 10 pack pod versions. All discussed in ART? methinks. I based my ranges for the Cataphract on the 9+ million km range of the SD missile, although that was an old school Manty missile, it was generally accepted to be similar to the SL missiles of the time. Add to that a double ranged at lower acceleration CM stage.
Guessing that to be 6.5 Mkm. Acceleration times unless mention in A Rising Thunder i don't know.

This is why i suggest they were like the Lerm and Erm missiles Duckk mentioned that the warheads were much smaller similar to the Lerm reduced warhead size. likely a shorter lasing rod in its laser head.

I keep thinking about how the laser head lasing rod is similar to a HEAT anti armour round, taken to the extreme. HEAT uses a copper alloy rod that is explosive packed and shaped by the explosive and is pushed through the armour with a cone shaped by explosives to focus the copper alloy rod and to melt the copper into a semi liquid state that both burns and punches through armour, spalling inside the target vehicle with burning hot molten copper, which leads to the fire and secondary explosions. Which is why surviving crew members hop out of armoured vehicles.

Still i don't understand how a missile can be so big with 5 metre lasing rods just is mind boggling. Missiles must be 10-15 metres long with 1-2 metre diameters. I just don't get how a Roland can pack 240 on such a small ship.

Weird Harold wrote:

darrell wrote:Quote: Torch of freedom:
and he had to admit that the Cataphracts in his battlecruisers' magazines

indicates that Monica's BC missiles are Cataphracts. Remember that monica's Cataphracts had 225 second drive time and a range from rest of 11.5Mkm plus or minus a few hundred thousand. The BC missiles supplied to monica are not standard solly issue.

Your conflating two different battles with two different sets of missile types. As far as can be determined, Monica was provided with current SLN (FF) equipment including missiles.

Was about to make this same point. I'll merely add that the system defense pods provided to Monica explictly had a single drive(ie, they weren't Cataphract-Cs) and the word Cataphract is never used in Shadow of Saganami.

However, they aren't referred to as Spathas, Javelins or Trebuchets either, leaving the possibility open that they were the product of a separate but closely related R&D program. Definitely a single-drive one, though.

AAMOF, according to Byng, what Monica got was outdated: "And we've got Javelins in the magazines, not those crap Pilums Technodyne supplied to Monica." [SFTS ch45]

Weird Harold wrote:< snip >

Your conflating two different battles with two different sets of missile types. As far as can be determined, Monica was provided with current SLN (FF) equipment including missiles.