Countering Missiles

darrell wrote:

Kytheros wrote:...
An autocannon. On a missile.

...

Just stop. Please.

shakes head.

An autocannon is similar to a tribarrel. both shoot solid projectiles at high velocity, although I don't know the size of autocannon projectiles, or if they are shot in bundles like shotgun shot.

Tribarrels are direct descendants of miniguns, multiple barrel systems, thus the name "tri" as in three barrel. Capable of tremendous rate of fire, as long as you have the ammunition, this is also why tribarrel's are fed from backback sized ammunition carriers rather than simple magazines.

Autocannons are not [usually] multi-barrel weapons, also capable of fully automatic but nowhere near as high as that of miniguns. From my very quick research, autocannons also tend to fire at much slower velocities than those of miniguns. The Honorverse may have adapted autocannons into the pulse rifles, but that's something that should be spun off into another topic.

Lord Skimper wrote:How about mounting an autocannon bore firing on a missile, apollo sized.

Somtaaw wrote:

darrell wrote:shakes head.

An autocannon is similar to a tribarrel. both shoot solid projectiles at high velocity, although I don't know the size of autocannon projectiles, or if they are shot in bundles like shotgun shot.

Tribarrels are direct descendants of miniguns, multiple barrel systems, thus the name "tri" as in three barrel. Capable of tremendous rate of fire, as long as you have the ammunition, this is also why tribarrel's are fed from backback sized ammunition carriers rather than simple magazines.

Autocannons are not [usually] multi-barrel weapons, also capable of fully automatic but nowhere near as high as that of miniguns. From my very quick research, autocannons also tend to fire at much slower velocities than those of miniguns. The Honorverse may have adapted autocannons into the pulse rifles, but that's something that should be spun off into another topic.

You took the similarity farther than I intended when I was responding to Skimper.

I wasn't trying to say anything about the actual configuration, just that both weapons, as well as the pulsar and fletchet gun, are projectile weapons.

If you want to get into specifics, I suspect that the autocannon is closest to a fully automatic fletchet gun, shooting several rounds a second, each "round" a bundle containing hundreds of projectiles.

We know from previous stories such as Mission of Honor that the Solarian League Navy's Aegis system fires canisters containing counter-missiles from out of their main tubes. So, instead of counter missiles how about one missile with, perhaps, only one superconducting capacitance ring, carrying a bout a dozen or more warheads but not fitted with Gravity Lenses to focus the blast. It would not need long range but what it would do was lay down a carpet of warheads which would detonate just as the attacking missiles are getting into final attack range.

In essence this is similar to the Haven Triple Ripple but instead of targeting missiles whilst they are still in mid-flight & under control this would be done in the final phase of their attack. Another spiritual ancestor would be the massed barrages that the US Navy's Task Force 38/58 put up against kamikaze attacks. It would not be a total defence, it would not be a perfect defence but anything which could thin out the massive Mantie missile salvoes to survivable levels has got to be worth trying.

Obviously this type of defence would not make much sense to either the Manties or the rest of the GA as they already have more capable defences but for a navy trying to narrow the technological gap it might be worth trying.

Thoughts anyone?

I could see the MAlign trying to sell it to the Sollies, especially if they'd heard about the tripple ripple.

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Annachie wrote:I could see the MAlign trying to sell it to the Sollies, especially if they'd heard about the tripple ripple.

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Considering they have already sold them the Cataphract missile which is much better than the SLN's existing missiles the idea might not be so crazy after all. Anything the MAlign can do limit or blunt the effectiveness of the GA can only be for the good for them & drawing things out will allow them more time to get their plans in place to counter the GA.

Rincewind wrote:We know from previous stories such as Mission of Honor that the Solarian League Navy's Aegis system fires canisters containing counter-missiles from out of their main tubes.

Incorrect, the SLN ripped out two entire missile launchers and replaced them with the Aegis system, which boiled down to a couple extra PDLCs and CM tubes. They still generally believe "lulz, missiles=useless, beams=good" mentality. the SLN still doesn't quite believe missiles can be as deadly as the Haven Sector has made them, and with the Mandarins lying their butts off, the SLN still doesn't quite believe Manticore can win in a "fair fight".

And we saw that while the SLN's Halo decoys, at a raw level, almost as good as anything Manticore can build. It had two massive drawbacks of horribly out of date software, and it was reliant on beamed power from its mothership. That beamed power is the real killer because the Ghost Rider decoys, even pre-Lorelei, had fusion plants which permitted vastly more powerful decoy signal strength. If the SLN updates their Halo software, they might start being a little more viable against missiles but the lack of internal power is still going to mean they'll take more hits than a GA ship using a Ghost Rider decoy.

Somtaaw wrote:

Rincewind wrote:We know from previous stories such as Mission of Honor that the Solarian League Navy's Aegis system fires canisters containing counter-missiles from out of their main tubes.

Incorrect, the SLN ripped out two entire missile launchers and replaced them with the Aegis system, which boiled down to a couple extra PDLCs and CM tubes. They still generally believe "lulz, missiles=useless, beams=good" mentality. the SLN still doesn't quite believe missiles can be as deadly as the Haven Sector has made them, and with the Mandarins lying their butts off, the SLN still doesn't quite believe Manticore can win in a "fair fight".

Actually I was looking at that just the other day. Torch of Freedom has a pretty detailed description. Aegis effectively removes 4 offense missile tubes, two are filled with plugs containing additional CM fire control, and two more were dedicated to throwing canisters of CMs.

This was a quick fix, to avoid the yard time it would take to install actual additional CM tubes.

Somtaaw wrote:

Rincewind wrote:We know from previous stories such as Mission of Honor that the Solarian League Navy's Aegis system fires canisters containing counter-missiles from out of their main tubes.

Incorrect, the SLN ripped out two entire missile launchers and replaced them with the Aegis system, which boiled down to a couple extra PDLCs and CM tubes. They still generally believe "lulz, missiles=useless, beams=good" mentality. the SLN still doesn't quite believe missiles can be as deadly as the Haven Sector has made them, and with the Mandarins lying their butts off, the SLN still doesn't quite believe Manticore can win in a "fair fight".

And we saw that while the SLN's Halo decoys, at a raw level, almost as good as anything Manticore can build. It had two massive drawbacks of horribly out of date software, and it was reliant on beamed power from its mothership. That beamed power is the real killer because the Ghost Rider decoys, even pre-Lorelei, had fusion plants which permitted vastly more powerful decoy signal strength. If the SLN updates their Halo software, they might start being a little more viable against missiles but the lack of internal power is still going to mean they'll take more hits than a GA ship using a Ghost Rider decoy.

While you are essentially correct on Halo, your Aegis details are not quite right. Admiral Caparelli on Aegis:

Mission of Honor, Chapter 18 wrote:“Defensively, there’s some information in the data about something called ‘Aegis,’ which is supposed to be a major advance in missile defense. As nearly as we can tell, though, what it really amounts to is ripping out a couple of broadside energy mounts, replacing them with additional counter-missile fire control and telemetry links, and then using main missile tubes to launch additional canisters of counter-missiles. It’s going to thicken their counter-missile fire, but only at the expense of taking several shipkiller missiles out of an already light broadside. And to make things worse from their perspective, their counter-missiles themselves aren’t as good as ours; the fire control software we’ve been looking at was several generations out of date, by our standards, at the start of the last war with Haven; and even on the ships where they’ve converted the autocannon to laser clusters, they don’t appear to have increased the number of point defense stations appreciably.”

Halo explained in:

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 16 wrote:Honor nodded. Michelle Henke had sent back working examples of Halo EW platforms from Sandra Crandall’s surrendered ships, and Solarian security protocols left a bit to be desired. BuWeaps had been able to analyze them literally down to the molecular level, and Sonja Hemphill’s people had not been impressed.
From a manufacturing standard, the decoys were as good as anything Manticore could have produced, but they’d never been designed to confront this sort of threat environment. They’d been designed to face a Solarian-style missile threat—one with single-drive missiles, less capable sensors, and enormously less capable fire control, and one without the massive density of pod-launched salvos. They were also range-limited, because they had to stay close enough to their motherships to receive broadcast power. And the same restriction also meant they could operate only in the plane of those ships’ own fields of fire, since no broadcast power transmission could be driven through an impeller wedge.
Within those limitations, they were actually a well-thought-out, workmanlike proposition. Which, unfortunately for the Solarian League Navy, was nowhere near good enough.
The same thing was true of the Aegis program, the SLN’s effort to thicken its counter-missile launchers. Within the limitations of the missile threat its designers had visualized, Aegis represented a significant upgrade by increasing the number of CMs its wall could control. In an MDM-dominated environment, however, all Aegis actually accomplished was to increase the density of its defensive fire from total futility to something which was merely hopelessly inadequate.

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

Somtaaw wrote:Incorrect, the SLN ripped out two entire missile launchers and replaced them with the Aegis system, which boiled down to a couple extra PDLCs and CM tubes. They still generally believe "lulz, missiles=useless, beams=good" mentality. the SLN still doesn't quite believe missiles can be as deadly as the Haven Sector has made them, and with the Mandarins lying their butts off, the SLN still doesn't quite believe Manticore can win in a "fair fight".

Since when dos the SLN believe in fighting fair?

pnakasone wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Incorrect, the SLN ripped out two entire missile launchers and replaced them with the Aegis system, which boiled down to a couple extra PDLCs and CM tubes. They still generally believe "lulz, missiles=useless, beams=good" mentality. the SLN still doesn't quite believe missiles can be as deadly as the Haven Sector has made them, and with the Mandarins lying their butts off, the SLN still doesn't quite believe Manticore can win in a "fair fight".

Since when dos the SLN believe in fighting fair?

War is fair?