QUESTION ABOUT WEAPON SYSTEMS

Vince wrote:No.

The closest thing to a Starfire sprint mode attack missile in the Honorverse is an attack missile with a counter-missile drive, which is still able to able to intercepted by point defense.

I'd argue that in some ways an energy torpedo is slightly more similar to a sprint mode Starfire missile than a CM drive missile.

Like the sprint mode missile (and unlike the CM drive) the ET moves too quickly to be effectively targeted by active point defense[1]. However it has a massive difference - it's completely ineffective if the ship's sidewall (read shields) are up.

Also I know sprint mode missiles were short ranged, but I don't remember how short. ETs are only good for (IIRC) 300,000 km; making them even shorter ranged than the ship's lasers and grasers!

So definitely not a direct analog - the Honorverse has no true analog to sprint mode.

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Also, to deal with MDMs, point defenses have been having to improve their ability to engage 0.8c+ targets; so they might be more effective against an ET now than they were 20 years ago when it was stated that they had little chance to stop an ET. However that's academic as long as the target can interpose a sidewall.

Cataphract wrote:Starfire... had 'sprint mode' missiles, that were short ranged, but could not be intercepted by any point defense... Is something like that feasible in Honorverse?

As mentioned, the honorverse doesn't have any analogue to the sprint mode missile. To elaborate a bit on *why*, it's mostly down to the differences between honorverse propulsion systems and those used in the starfire universe.

The key point is that honorverse propulsion systems impart an *acceleration*, not a *velocity*. Anything propelled by an impeller drive has to start off with whatever its base velocity is, and accelerate from there to whatever its final velocity is, over a noteworthy period of time. Thus, a missile at close range is actually moving much *slower* than it will be once it reaches the edge of its powered envelope. Even if you use the 'high power' acceleration rather than the endurance acceleration (or, as mentioned, use a countermissile drive), you're at best only making up some of the loss, not going any *faster*. Thus, an honorverse missile used up close is *at best* no more difficult to intercept than one used at long range.

On the other hand, starfire drive tech simply 'snaps' a ship/etc to whatever its maximum speed is instantly (or, at least, with a negligible acceleration period). Thus, a 'high power but extremely limited endurance' missile *is* harder to intercept, since it doesn't have to start out at zero but instead is going faster than a regular missile over its *entire* life.

In some ways, the closest honorverse analogue to a starfire sprint mode missile is actually a max-range MDM. In the honorverse, *MDMs* are the missiles which generate such extreme speeds that point defense has difficulty engaging them (we've seen this a lot with the sollies in recent books). But because of the rules of honorverse drive tech, you can only do this with a very *long* endurance missile drive rather than a very *short* endurance one.

Jonathan_S wrote:So definitely not a direct analog - the Honorverse has no true analog to sprint mode.

Wouldn't the Vipers be a technical sprint mode missile? They're still among the fastest 'missiles' in space, being based off, as far as we know, the very latest generation of countermissiles. So nothing else in space has a faster speed, that we currently know about and the competition are CMs while are functionally incapable of true attacks.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, to deal with MDMs, point defenses have been having to improve their ability to engage 0.8c+ targets; so they might be more effective against an ET now than they were 20 years ago when it was stated that they had little chance to stop an ET. However that's academic as long as the target can interpose a sidewall.

I'm not actually sure defenses are upto routinely handling incoming missiles scorching in at 0.8c+.

-CM's have doubled in speed since 1900
-CM's have also gained only a small amount of seeker capability
-PDLC's have gotten bother larger, and faster-firing than the turn of the century

So the defensive side has been forced into vastly enlarged quantity of incremental increases to compensate for the quantum leap of attack missiles. But they're still working primarily off probabilities, rather than any serious increase in capabilities.


As of the 1905-era, the 0.8c+ missile strikes were only truly deadly because they were always burnt-out wedges, which meant harder to detect with the emphasis on gravitics. And the RADAR and LIDAR bounces were returning to the ships with target information bare seconds ahead of the missiles.

In the 1920+ era, those same missiles are scorching in at 0.8c+ with active wedges, which made it easier for the bat-blind CM's to see them, and actually made it more difficult for the attack missiles to achieve their hits because of their speed. How many battles have we seen, where incoming attack missiles would actually fly entirely past their targets, because their closing speed was too high?

Jonathan_S wrote:So definitely not a direct analog - the Honorverse has no true analog to sprint mode.

From the very foundation of the Honorverse:

On Basilisk Station
Chapter Two wrote:The problem was that, on paper, the whole thing made sense. Gravity sidewalls were the first and primary line of defense for every warship. The impeller drive created a pair of stressed gravity bands above and below a ship—a wedge, open at both ends, though the forward edge was far deeper than the after one—capable in theory of instant acceleration to light speed. Of course, that kind of acceleration would turn any crew to gory goo; even with modern inertial compensators, the best acceleration any warship could pull under impeller was well under six hundred gravities, but it had been a tremendous step forward. And not simply in terms of propulsion; even today no known weapon could penetrate the main drive bands of a military-grade impeller wedge, which meant simply powering its impellers protected a ship against any fire from above or below.

The limitation in the Honorverse of a "sprint-mode missile" would seem to be materials technology in hardening drive and guidance components against the near infinite acceleration theoretically possible. (and/or Inertial Compensator technology.)

Somtaaw wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So definitely not a direct analog - the Honorverse has no true analog to sprint mode.

Wouldn't the Vipers be a technical sprint mode missile? They're still among the fastest 'missiles' in space, being based off, as far as we know, the very latest generation of countermissiles. So nothing else in space has a faster speed, that we currently know about and the competition are CMs while are functionally incapable of true attacks.

They've got the quickest acceleration known, but it's only 40% faster than a shipkiller at full power - not exactly inconceivably quicker. Assuming they're engaging at absolute max range (so they've had as much time as possible to build speed) it takes them about 18 seconds to cover the final 1.5 million km that the defending CMs can reach, and they reach it (still accelerating hard) at only 72,618 KPS.

Compare that to even an old-style SDM which, at its max range, takes 20 second to cross that same final 1.5 million km, which it reaches at 72,128 KPS.
We're only taking about 0.6% faster than an SDM; hardly an uninterceptable sprint mode.

(The one thing that the Viper has going for it is that it's total flight time over it's short 3.5 million km range, is only 75 seconds vs the 180 for the SDM. So the first time you encounter it your tac officers and systems are confused by the speed it can generation over that short time - but it's not slashing through your defensive zone in 6 seconds like an MDM is)


As people mentioned above, what made the sprint drive missile so effective was the 'instant' speed the Starfire inertialess drives provided. And as WeirdHarold points out there are engineering limits of some sort that (to date) have prevented anything like instantaneous accel in the Honorverse.

Jonathan_S wrote:They've got the quickest acceleration known, but it's only 40% faster than a shipkiller at full power - not exactly inconceivably quicker. Assuming they're engaging at absolute max range (so they've had as much time as possible to build speed) it takes them about 18 seconds to cover the final 1.5 million km that the defending CMs can reach, and they reach it (still accelerating hard) at only 72,618 KPS.

Compare that to even an old-style SDM which, at its max range, takes 20 second to cross that same final 1.5 million km, which it reaches at 72,128 KPS.
We're only taking about 0.6% faster than an SDM; hardly an uninterceptable sprint mode.

(The one thing that the Viper has going for it is that it's total flight time over it's short 3.5 million km range, is only 75 seconds vs the 180 for the SDM. So the first time you encounter it your tac officers and systems are confused by the speed it can generation over that short time - but it's not slashing through your defensive zone in 6 seconds like an MDM is)


As people mentioned above, what made the sprint drive missile so effective was the 'instant' speed the Starfire inertialess drives provided. And as WeirdHarold points out there are engineering limits of some sort that (to date) have prevented anything like instantaneous accel in the Honorverse.

The main unstated advantage of a missile with high acceleration is it's ability to generate evasion maneuvers. Since it's delta V is outside the normal capabilities of a missile, unprepared countermissile software may not be able to predict or account for such high radical maneuvers, and be unable to generate hits as the missile maneuvers outside it's engagement basket.

I rather imagine that those 'engineering limits' derive from the fact that real engineering has to be done with real materials. Which tend to have inconvenient properties like finite but non-zero length, width, height and mass. All of which have been found in the past to bollix up theoretical calculations something wicked.

Jonathan_S wrote: < snip >
As people mentioned above, what made the sprint drive missile so effective was the 'instant' speed the Starfire inertialess drives provided. And as WeirdHarold points out there are engineering limits of some sort that (to date) have prevented anything like instantaneous accel in the Honorverse.

Cataphract wrote:It seems to me that missile combat has become paramount, and at vastly extended range. That said, why would SD's and the like still mount lasers and/or grasers (aside from tradition)? Wouldn't the space be better used for more missile tubes or the like? With the RMN advantage in missiles and targeting systems how would anything ever get into energy/beam range? Jeff Shanton

Reminds me of the 'brilliant' decision by the U.S. Air Force that fighters no longer need guns since missiles were going to do everything.

And this worked really fine until they went into actual combat. Then fighters got guns, and they still do.

Modern aircraft, and Manticoran warships have to serve for a long time and you can't predict every situation they will get into.