In theory, that is all accurate. However, some of the finer details of honorverse technology make autocannons simply impractical as missile defense. Remember that the standard distance at which a missile becomes uninterceptable (because its warhead detonates and the laser rods do their thing) is at somewhere around 20- to 30000 kilometers. In order to get an autocannon projectile on a heading where an intercept is even possible, the firing mechanism needs to be insanely accurate to a degree that seems pretty impossible given the mechanical stresses of firing a cannon.
If we were talking about intercepting one missile with one round, i would agree. However, reading your point about the distance in which a missile detonates, i think i´ve failed to clear a point. I dont mean it as just close in defence. They´re ballistic so you can shoot as far as you are likely to get an intercept. Well above the range of CM or lasers. Then as range closes you could combine them.
Regarding the mechanical stresses of firing a cannon... you only need for you rounds (not just one, all the rounds of the ship) to be in a certain area at a certain time. We can do it nowadays, its done in the Honorverse with other weapons systems, therefore i fail to see why it can´t be done in this instance. Im not being obnoxious i just don´t see a physical problem to achieve it.
But even shrapnel rounds aren't that effective: The round needs to be large enough to contain enough shrapnel so that a given volume of space is filled with enough material to actually hit the missile. The missile body is very, very small, after all.
Autocannons used to work because missiles had to thread the needle between the top and bottom of the target's wedge ÄÄ8and penetrate the sidewall), which narrows the possible attack vectors by a considerable margin. The laserhead makes them pretty much useless.
Yes, you are right, it needs to hit the missile. Im not so certain it needs to be big at all, after all if a dense metallic piece of shrapnell weighing 25 grams hits a 3 stage missile at relativistic speeds i don´t think you´re realizing how doomed that missile would be just because of the kinetic energy release. It would miss or be destroyed, and i think (confirm, please, so we are on the same page) that 3 drive missile is both way bigger and more expensive than an AA round would be.
And yes, laserheads turned normal autocannon absolutely irrelevant.
I haven't read the Travis Long books, but I think that even then, autocannons were never considered to be anything but a CIWS for missile defence. By the time the solarians built their SDs, they definitely were not considered ship-to-ship weapons in anything but the strangest of circumstances.
No, i failed to explain or specify i meant their use as a ship to ship weapon system, since that´s how it would have been created initially, being more accessible technology than lasers or grasers. Their origin as a weapon system is Pre-Diaspora. You can read about their use on By the Book, by Charles E. Gannon (great fan of the author) in the anthology Beginnings. This is the Honorverse Wikia entrange for them:
An autocannon was a rapid-fire projectile weapon that fired explosive shells.
They were common armament of warships during the Diaspora of Man, forming the core of close-range combat and point defense, before laser and graser turrets began to replace them. (HHA6.2: ACTA)
If missiles are already close to impossible to defeat using autocannons, LACs are much harder. After all, LACs actually do mount sidewalls.
Yeah, but they need even more than missiles to keep a formation, You maybe right though i don´t know if a conventional explode-on-impact autocannon round would do damage enough to burn through LACs bow or aft wall.
Yes, but countermissiles can and do maneuver, and they are trying to get their impeller wedge into the target's impeller wedge, both of which are many orders of magnitude larger than any shrapnel field an autocannon can produce.
They still need to get into the same portion of space. Im not saying CM aren´t better, they are. But they still need a direct hit, and they burn fuel. Flak fire would outrange them, being ballistic, and complement them when in range. Yes an impeller wedge is larger, but is a threat to only 1 target. Flak fire in the middle of a wave of missiles would be an area denial system and a threat to multiple targets.
Furthermore, those Solie SDs already have the autocannons, if they could fire SEM CMs that would make then better AA SDs, not worse.
No, you can't. The vast majority of your payload will be wasted, and unless you manage to basically get the AC shell to detonate somewhere within the missile's wedge envelope, it will be wasted entirely.
I would like to know how you come to that conclussion. If you can show a reasoning i can share, then i agree the system i propose is pointless.
I will share my reasoning. If you interpose in the path of a missile wave let´s say, the fire of a division of 4 AA SDs, each one of them firing 45 autocannons per side (since we are talking about SDs i think its a moderate amount) and with 4 AA SDs per division, you would have 180 rounds. Let´s leave aside the rate of fire and focus on just that salvo. Now you distribute that fire so when they explode by proximity their spheres are overlapping partially. At the moment of detonation you would have 180000 shrapnells rounds at relativistic speeds in the path of the missiles coming from every possible angle. Some of those fragments are gonna get through the missile wedge envelope and impact the missiles.
I would happily accept any holes in my reasoning anyone can point out.
Except that the distances involved are so large that you literally can't produce a shrapnel field large enough to intercept even one, let alone a single pod's load worth of missiles before they can fire their laser heads. Any intercept generated will be entirely accidental.
By finding new applications for technologies that were previously relegated to obsolescence (SD(P)s only exist because pods became viable again due to advances in single-shot missile launchers, for example), yes.
Problem is, Autocannons are far too obsolete for this to work
With the speeds involved, even minor course adjustments on the part of the missile will guarantee that the autocannon misses (and that's before we have to factor in recoil and all the other mechanical stresses autocannons have to compensate).
2c) That 20-50k range os not the range even dds get to in combat, that is the distance the Trebuchet fires its lasers to kill your ship. so how long does it take for your round of ~50mm autocannon shell to traverse that distance? Because it takes less than one seond from detonation to impact of that x-ray. That speed is magnetically induced unless you're still using chemical propellants, which see (3b). This Vi is something you need to address. Vi of laser fire = c = 299792458mps.
I have aglomerated several points you raise that i think have a common root.
See i think we are not understanding each other. Why not? You don´t detonate the rounds immediately. You fire your AC rounds as soon as your computer gives you a chance of a sucessfull interposition of your fire into the missiles path, because they are ballistic. You have no need to hold your fire, it´s the missile that needs to get close. And in the Honorverse they´re fired at OUTRAGEOUS distances.
I´m under the impression that you thought the ACs would be fired inside the usual range for them?
The idea has no merit though. It's like asking whether or not the modern USN has any use for carronades on their aircraft carriers.
Oh well took the example a bit too far didn´t we? But since you ask, they´re not above using just concrete...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_bombCounterargument: The major bottleneck for the RMN has historically been their inability to operate the hulls they could theoretically build. Right now, the RMN is stretched for personnel. Now, think a second about what is required for a deployment of these old ships: Coming up with somewhere around 2500 people per ship isn't trivial, especially given that each of those people will be more effective in whatever role they currently fill aboard an RMN or GA ship.
Yes, there's a period of vulnerability where the existing fleet will be overworked. But the tasks they do get are in themselves trivial to the point of being practically risk-free; there are very few scenarios where an SLN commander can bring a GA fleet into combat unless the GA fleet cooperates. Even then, chances are the GA fleet will be able to dictate the terms of the engagement.
Well yes, but i think you are overlooking that all graduates from the Star Empire and Grayson, to not mention associate powers, are going to have no ships to man for at least a year.
Also, i don´t think we are going to see the SLN forcing a confrontation. The stated new strategy is raids, and to cover all the possible targets you will need more ships. The only place where a showdown is likely, at least for now, is Beowulf.
To use an ahistorical example: Imagine you're the Royal Navy. For centuries, you have ruled the waves, other nations cowering before your might. Your dreadnoughts are the most terrible thing anyone has ever seen, and although they may not be exactly state of the art, the fact that you have so many of them and the crews and ressources to run them on patrols every day of every week makes you seem invinvible.
Then along come rumblings from oversees: In an inconceivable move, the americans have thrown out all their dreadnoughts, scrapped every single one of their support ships and cruisers, and have standardized on a few designs. Each of which being variations on the Zumwalt, with a gun that can comfortably shoot over the horizon and munitions that can even, impossibly, adjust their trajectory while in the air. They've also deployed something they call "cruise missiles", and are even claiming that they've installed observation platforms in low orbit that allow them to observe your every move. And if that wasn't enough, US planes have been observed flying way outside of what you would assume their operational range to be, why, it's almost as if those devils had somehow figured out a way to launch their planes off of their ships without having to mount floaters to make them recoverable.
That's the sort of technological disadvantage the SLN ships are currently operating at. For the GA to use the SLN SDs, in any capacity, is almost as preposterous a notion as it would be for the Royal Navy to propose using HMS Victory as an air defence vessel because its cannons are really good at shooting buckshot.
Ill be damned you´re making my point for me! The Zumwalt is a new design that uses a new weapon system, making everything else obsolete.
I don´t really think making a totally extreme comparison is going to convince me. Let´s leave it at stating that the technological gap is there, but is nowhere close to what it would be between nuclear powered carriers and a ship from the age of sail, shall we?
I do not recall where in the Honorverse autocannon were used to fight ship-to-ship. If there was a time, grazers and lasers replaced them centuries before OBS because autocannon were not used in the Manticore Ascendant series as ship to ship weapons. Even now, warships seldom engage with cannons and never with autocannon. Autocannon is chiefly antimissile and to combat the modern equivalent of the WWII PT Boats: the fast attack boats.
Yes, they were used, and we are agreed in their actual use.
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/AutocannonAn autocannon was a rapid-fire projectile weapon that fired explosive shells.
They were common armament of warships during the Diaspora of Man, forming the core of close-range combat and point defense, before laser and graser turrets began to replace them. (HHA6.2: ACTA)
2a) One mission kills a missile with energy transfer. Wedge-to-wedge fratricide is the best energy transfer. By exploding a 16# cannonball, one sends shrapnel, not just 360 degrees but 41253 deg^2. one is back to the first issue with laser head missiles ie more than half the available x-rays are blown away from the lasing rods. Solution: magnetic pinching bottles. Solution here is to make more of an artillery shell with the explosive mostly in the rear.
2b) Again you are down to transfer of energy. 1 16# steel shot would transfer a lot of energy. 1/.016th of that energy would be transferred by each piece of shrapnel that actually impacted a missile, and multiple hits per each exploding round, pretty rare. Of course, the explosive itself does multiply the velocity, therefore the KE transfer. And that is assuming your shrapnel gets past the particle shielding.
Agreeing on wedge to wedge being the best, i´m not proposing substitution of the CMs. I´ll just point out that in Newtonian physics you´re missing the initial speed of the ship from which the shot is fired, which is more KE. An impact with enough KE on an unarmoured missile can´t be good for the missile. It is particle shielding after all, not armor.
3) Available space. a) where are we to mount these miracles of obsolete technology, anti ship lasers,and AM laser cannons? Some logic would imply put the most effective and the most possible in the available space. Why, oh why, Does one lose 2 lasercannon for 3 autocannon? Makes no military sense. And(b) we have to sacrifice AM storage space for autocannon ammunition storage. Again, where is the logic?
Logic is as follows: you have obsolete SLN SDs. They have already ACs. They have already lasers. For the purpose of their new mission, they don´t need as many missile tubes, or grasers, or heavy lasers. Because we have agreed they´re obsolete. So if they´re obsolete and can´t be used in a fight they´re irrelevant. So you have all that space to play with and put autocannons and cluster lasers for AA defense. You don´t sacrifice space for CMs storage please be serious, we are talking about SDs that used to storage ship to ship missiles. And they already space to store AC rounds. Any holes in this logic, please point it out.
1) Bolthole is predominantly their R&D facility. Yes there is a nearby (same sta system) shipyard, BUT it is not the only shipyard system. IIRC Chantilly and Solon were major facilities.
2) As I have already cited from MoH, Haven has agreed to turn out purpose built hulls to send back to Manticore for final fitting with Beowulf mfgd. keyhole-two platforms.
3) Not stated but implied was by the time such hulls would hit Manticore A/B orbit, the yard space would be available and operational. If not, the outfitting would occur at Beowulf.
We can agree all that is at least a year away, in the most optimistic of outcomes, and as we write not even the R&D personnel is in place.
4) At which time the deferred decision of what to do with obsolete Solly c ...er hulls, once again becomes relevant. By which time you have spent $$ onn labor and time and materials refitting, refurbishing and refining obsolete garbage for which now, 3 years later there is no conceivable use but sending them to the breakers. Decision delayed = higher capital recovery loss.
5) You have destroyed a large part of your economy with Lacoon 1 and 2.The Yawata Strike has finished off the rest, short term. You are selling war bonds to Beowulf to even exist.
Is not at which time. They are not new ships, they´re modifications, and they don´t need to wait for new shipyards. The surviving facilites can do the modifications. Before you object, remember that Pre-Blackbird facilites in Grayson already managed to modify and update PRH SDs in record time. Before their tech became close to Manticores. If it could be done with those Havenite SDs... why can´t it be done with this ones? Actually it would be even good for the economy, since otherwise you have idle installations and workers, bringing no income, making no expense. Stalled. If you´re on a warfooted economy theres no reason to allow that.
6) You are no longer fighting Haven, you are now fighting an obvious 3rd class navy. As long as you have missiles, you have sufficient platforms, since you are not in a war of attrition , but as someone else puts it- battle porn. Thre is no immediate pressure for new hulls. yes your new construction that was just starting was destroyed, but so was about all of your available personnel to man new construction. 5th space lord is scrambling to find Ginger Lewis to captain a ship. In no other circumstances could she pull MCPO Wandermann for her ship.
I love that definition. Yes is battle-porn. Since the advent of Apollo, every other guy is so outranged is not even funny. But i think theres a possibility that may have been overlooked. The SLN is a 3rd rate navy yes, with huge numbers, ineffective in combat. And its turning into a raiding strategy. In which it can employ those numbers. The more space you have to defend, the more succesfully the SLN can raid... unless you get more hulls. Even incompetent as it is described, even Solies can manage to attack lightly defended systems with overwhelming numbers.
There was a manpower problem. There WON´T be one once more classes graduate and find out they have no ship to crew.
7) Obsolete Solly SDs and other classes are extremely manpower intensive. And from what they found aboard ships captured at Spindle, the SLN has been shirking even routine maintenance on front line ships. Again manpower you just DO NOT HAVE. And even if you had the manpower, you would have to spend time training the trainers to train the engineering, fire control, etc. crews on the operation of this junk. By which time, again, your new purpose built hulls are coming in from Havenite yards.
No, you just need to repeat what the Graysons did. You have the manpower, since the workforce on all the minor installations is there. You´ll have the manpower to crew them, because you are still training people that are going to graduate and you won´t have a shining new ship for them. If Graysons could do it, and admittedly Solie SDs are more modern than what the GSN modified, it should be doable.
If you are right about the timing then yes it´s moot. May I point out that would mean the modification and entry of service of this repurposed SDs would need to take more than 2 years? If we accept that its going to take at leat a year to get new hulls, that they need to be retooled either on Manticore or Beowulf, and you add transit times... is it too far fetched to agree the repurpose should be finished and the ships in service earlier than that?
I think I am addressing your proposals not just arbitrarily nay-saying. If I am laboeing under a weirdly wired misperception, please feel free.
Thanks a lot, really. Where i think we didnt have a clear understanding i have tried to clear it out. I always emjoy an exchange of opinions.
There isn't actually a scarcity of RMN ships either. Yes, the Battle of Manticore was expensive - but mostly in SDs and first-generation SD(P)s.
They now have at least 150, perhaps as many as 250, Apollo-capable SD(P)s, thanks to new construction finished after BoMA and before Oyster Bay struck.
Any single Invictus could've fought the entire Battle of Spindle to complete destruction of the SLN forces alone on its internal magazines, without any ammo ships or pre-laid system defense pods. It'd be bone-dry empty at the end, but it could be done.
So even with the lower estimate, the RMN's battle wall could take care of ten thousand SLN SDs all by itself. Without mentioning the Graysons, Andies or Havenites.
Even if the SLN reactivated its entire Reserve(an impossibility financially and manpower wise), they no longer have ten thousand SDs. They're down to 9,500, with about 1,500 actives.
No, i don´t think the problem is going to be the respective walls of battle. As i said, i agree is highly unlikely the SLN will look for a confrontation. The raiding strategy though will probably pose a problem, and can cause damage to many systems. Also you´ll taking the initiative from the enemy, and there´ll be space you need to hold (like the wormhole terminals).
It will be (as I think someone mentioned about 20 pages ago) another 2-3yearsbefore the SLN can even start designing new,actually survivable, hulls. And that is assuming any of their sips limp home after battle-porn.
I don´t think we will even get there. If the League crumbles, the SLN falls too. If anyone is going to design ships itll be this RF.
I figure this has been mentioned before but I probably missed it while I was away for several months, but I hope and pray that the M.A.N. does NOT find out where Bolthole is ... at least not before it's too late for them to do anything about the sledgehammers that are going to land on them.
Not the most insane plot twist I've seen mentioned here.
I think 2 points hold (1) RMN spent considerable resources searching for bolthole for that same reason only to not find it. (2) Either Clone 1 or Clone 2 mentioned to Albrecht that the sharks (spider drive ships) really shouldn't be used to go chasing after the new ships that escaped OB. Same logic should apply, but not necessarily.
its a cost benefit calculation. And I can see the benefit of destroying a handful of ships being lower than taking out the R&D and production failities at Bolthole. But risking a ship and especially a crew + giving the GA another chance to spot the Spider ... Yes it could be argued ether way.
Personally, i think if it comes it´ll be through an sleeper agent. Someone on the R&D teams infected just for the purpose of sending the information out and suiciding afterwards. The truth is, if Bolthole survives it would be necessary to see huge leaps forward in that RF.
