Honorverse ramblings and musings

The E wrote:

cthia wrote:Another question regarding Barricade that I don't understand. Since the RMN had such control of their missiles and since the Solly's ballistic launches were held so tightly together, why didn't the RMN simply explode a few missiles within each closely packed launch? Wouldn't the standoff range of the explosions do more damage to the missiles?

As ncwolf already noted, the potential damage a nuclear proximity blast can do is fairly limited. Remember the "Tripple Ripple"? That strategy didn't actually take out the attack missiles, it just disrupted their targeting sensors while they were getting into final acquisition; At the time where the Barricade launches intercepted their targets, the targets didn't have their sensors online (it is most likely that the sensors were still under the ablative shielding most missiles carry).

To be fair, the Tripple Ripple was used against missiles under drive, which means their active rad shields should also be active.

I don't know if missiles on a short (say 8 minutes or less) ballistic segment can keep their rad shielding active while the wedge is down. IIRC on very long coasts they can't, that's why system defense MDMs have special ablative plates over the sensors so they don't get cooked by relativistic particle impacts on a longer high velocity coast phase.

If the missiles don't have rad shields up they should be at least as vulnerable to nukes as towed pods are. And those get killed by "nearby" laserheads going off - which is going to be 30k+ km away. Vastly further than the few km away a missile wedge can shred a coasting missile...

I think the wedge of the Manticorian missle has a much greater range than a nuclear blast in space. Even laseheads, you are trying to aim the indivudal (and narrow) laser beams at fairly tiny targets but the wedge is essentialy putting a very large forcefield infront of the Solly missiles which acts as an area weapon. And, if the SLN missles are running in the ballistic phase, the RMN weapons could take out more than one because they would only be dealing with the mechanical missles, not suffering wedge fratricide.

This does re-raise the question of using the canister of CM submutions on capital ship missles as we have seen done in the past- like battle of Hyicenth. RMN has them and although it would seem to be a semi-despiration move to thicken your CM envelope at expence of offensive fire, they do or did make them. I'm not sure if the original intent was purely to launch, or be able to launch multiple times the number of CMs that the capaisity of existing CM tubes though that is what it seems.
Now that RMN has Apallo and the FTL capability, it should be able to provide targetting data to CMs which are caniester launched. There are drawbacks. One is that for each canister you launch you cut your offensive missles by 1 per volley. The other is that you have a limited number of tactical channels for your own missiles so you have to choose which you are going to provide the data for. On the other hand, as SLN is now using Cataphracts and apparently using the ballistic segment capasity, they are engaging from much greater distances and you have more time to deal with things, particularly with Apollo. if you can safely not update your own offensive missles for some period of time over those distances, you could possibly engage the SLN misslies in thier ballistic mode and switch back to your MDMs before they get into counter missle fire range of the SLN ships.
Not in every battle but where things look like there isn't going to be a lot of maneuvering that would require profile changes on your weapons. When they used Barricade, the SLN force was heading for Tremain's force and neither was doing anyting either fancy or radical for maneuvering. Both the forces were in a relativly tight group (mutual countermissile protection range etc) and the SLN volleys were aimed at a "small" forces so the weapos were not likely to spread all that much given that they had to be within engagement range of their targets when they reached them. It was only going to be a spread sufficent to keep the SLN missle from killing each other with wedges and no wider than putting all of them withing terminal engagement range of whichever RMN ship or ships they were shooting at in that volley.

So, that SHOULD be no worse an engagement envelope for canister launched (off an MDM) than from the CM launchers on one of the RMN ships. You have Apollo, you have FTL tactical data and you are shooting at Cataphracts which are in ballistic flight.
The entire intent is to thin out your enemy's volley before it gets to your ship-launched CM envelope and then energy countermissle defence weapons. You cut down the number you have to do close intercept on, the more likely you get most if not all of them and the less damage you take.
Presuming you can control and update the canister fired CMs using linkage though apollo, you should be able to kill a number of Catapharcts with each canister. You may or may not know how many (ok, if any) you got, but your tactical computers will be able to give you that when the Cataphracts finish the ballistic component and the 2nd stages light off. Your defence systems "just" have to deal with what goes back to running with wedges. Unless SLN gets devious and some of the ballistic shots are going to be able enter engagement range prior to engaging- (and the computers should be able to tell you that ahead of time) and manuver at the last moment, you should have reduced the number of targets.
What am I missing?

Jonathan_S wrote:

The E wrote:
As ncwolf already noted, the potential damage a nuclear proximity blast can do is fairly limited. Remember the "Tripple Ripple"? That strategy didn't actually take out the attack missiles, it just disrupted their targeting sensors while they were getting into final acquisition; At the time where the Barricade launches intercepted their targets, the targets didn't have their sensors online (it is most likely that the sensors were still under the ablative shielding most missiles carry).

To be fair, the Tripple Ripple was used against missiles under drive, which means their active rad shields should also be active.

I don't know if missiles on a short (say 8 minutes or less) ballistic segment can keep their rad shielding active while the wedge is down. IIRC on very long coasts they can't, that's why system defense MDMs have special ablative plates over the sensors so they don't get cooked by relativistic particle impacts on a longer high velocity coast phase.
If the missiles don't have rad shields up they should be at least as vulnerable to nukes as towed pods are. And those get killed by "nearby" laserheads going off - which is going to be 30k+ km away. Vastly further than the few km away a missile wedge can shred a coasting missile...

Manticorian and Havenite MDMs have jetsonable rad shrouds for their missile sensors. That does not necessarily mean that Mesan Cataphracts have the same shroud (unless I've missed textev.)

Manticore and Haven have decades of Darwinian updates to their weapons systems - others have simulations. so some things may be missed.

No, it was noted that Apollo missiles had a jetisonable protective cover for the missile sensors.

And the triple ripple only worked because of plot. You can’t duplicate it because of plot. The reason ships don’t defend themselves by dispersing and detonating arrays of nukes to overload the sensors of unshielded deployed X-ray rods is because the triple ripple’s mode of action was plot.

Brigade XO wrote:What am I missing?

CM Cannister rounds are not "CMs on a missile," they are CMs in a missile-sized sabot. They do NOT increase CM range.

Weird Harold wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:What am I missing?

CM Cannister rounds are not "CMs on a missile," they are CMs in a missile-sized sabot. They do NOT increase CM range.

Plus there's no evidence an Apollo Control missile could talk to CMs, even if it could keep up with them (RMN CMs begin about 41% quicker than an Apollo control missile are it's max accel)

And right now the Mk31s Manticore is firing from their CM tubes fall off significantly in effectiveness towards the outer edges of their powered range (IIRC they already fly about 25% further than they can really effectively be controlled)

Hi Jonathan_S,

The CM long range effectiveness varies depending somewhat on plot, the first few times in AAC, the RHN was stunned by the acceleration and range [1276 km/sec, and 3,588,750 km range] permitting 8 more CM's to be fired by the same launcher in the 65 seconds before the incoming missiles were engaged by the PDC's, considerably better than the old CM's [~58 seconds and 1.5 M km range], thus reducing the need for CM canisters, which only carried 3 CM's in a SDM sized casing.

From the reported missile tonnage approximate volume limits can be estimated, so the canisters at Hyacinth were in the 70 ton 1 meter thick range, while the Mk-16 is 92 tons and 1 [2?] meters in diameter, we don't have much detail on the Mark-23 Apollo's size or tonnage, but something in the 110-120 ton range, less than the largest old capital SDM's 140-150 tons.

It might be possible to put a second trio into a Apollo sized canister, but the 'Barricade' MDM's AVERAGED something like 24 kills each, considerably more than what a simple nuke or laserhead could expect to get.

OTOH, given that "Barricade's" missiles were launched at maximum acceleration, there is no way they could have reached Tamaguchi.

Some people need to reread the passage.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:quote="Brigade XO"What am I missing?quote

CM Cannister rounds are not "CMs on a missile," they are CMs in a missile-sized sabot. They do NOT increase CM range.

Plus there's no evidence an Apollo Control missile could talk to CMs, even if it could keep up with them (RMN CMs begin about 41% quicker than an Apollo control missile are it's max accel)

And right now the Mk31s Manticore is firing from their CM tubes fall off significantly in effectiveness towards the outer edges of their powered range (IIRC they already fly about 25% further than they can really effectively be controlled)

I saw a way for more of the Manty missile launches to get through, drawing on more of my baggagge acquired from life -- more specifically, my experience as a football player. Consider that a running back has lead blockers to plow the field. I thought, 'Hey, the RMN can do that by stacking missiles inline with the leading missiles firing off and plowing the field of CMs.' But. They already do that!...

Sov wrote:Attack missiles would normally be preprogrammed to spread wider as they approached their final attack runs, but even that degree of dispersal was often limited. Maximum tactical effectiveness required them to be brought in on their target as close to simultaneously as possible and to bring their lasers to bear through the narrow aperture of that target’s sidewalls, and the extent to which they could be spread and then maneuvered into position to accomplish those two ends depended entirely on how much time was left on their drives for the final attack run. Indeed, in some instances, where particularly heavy counter-missile fire was anticipated, doctrine actually called for bringing them in “in trail,” stacking them one behind the next, in lines two or even three deep on exactly the same trajectory, like beads on a string. That deliberately sacrificed the lead missiles and accepted a shorter time window for the following missiles’ onboard sensors to directly acquire the target, but it also used the leaders’ impeller wedges to take out the counter-missiles which might otherwise have reached the trailers.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:quote="Brigade XO"What am I missing?quote

CM Cannister rounds are not "CMs on a missile," they are CMs in a missile-sized sabot. They do NOT increase CM range.

Plus there's no evidence an Apollo Control missile could talk to CMs, even if it could keep up with them (RMN CMs begin about 41% quicker than an Apollo control missile are it's max accel)

And right now the Mk31s Manticore is firing from their CM tubes fall off significantly in effectiveness towards the outer edges of their powered range (IIRC they already fly about 25% further than they can really effectively be controlled)

lyonheart wrote:Hi Jonathan_S,

The CM long range effectiveness varies depending somewhat on plot, the first few times in AAC, the RHN was stunned by the acceleration and range [1276 km/sec, and 3,588,750 km range] permitting 8 more CM's to be fired by the same launcher in the 65 seconds before the incoming missiles were engaged by the PDC's, considerably better than the old CM's [~58 seconds and 1.5 M km range], thus reducing the need for CM canisters, which only carried 3 CM's in a SDM sized casing.

From the reported missile tonnage approximate volume limits can be estimated, so the canisters at Hyacinth were in the 70 ton 1 meter thick range, while the Mk-16 is 92 tons and 1 [2?] meters in diameter, we don't have much detail on the Mark-23 Apollo's size or tonnage, but something in the 110-120 ton range, less than the largest old capital SDM's 140-150 tons.

It might be possible to put a second trio into a Apollo sized canister, but the 'Barricade' MDM's AVERAGED something like 24 kills each, considerably more than what a simple nuke or laserhead could expect to get.

OTOH, given that "Barricade's" missiles were launched at maximum acceleration, there is no way they could have reached Tamaguchi.

Some people need to reread the passage.

L

Pardon my bold to call attention.

Barricade's missiles were NOT launched at maximum acceleration. They were intentionally retarded to give more loitering time inside the SLN ballistic launch...

“Barricade in thirty seconds,” Golbatsi announced. Quite unnecessarily, Tremaine reflected, since his own eyes had been on the readout for the last ten seconds. He thought about mentioning that, then decided it would only indicate he was nervous over his own brilliant idea.
“Twenty…ten…five…now,” Golbatsi said, and a second salvo of Mark 23s launched. There were less than half as many of them this time…but their acceleration was twice as high.

As far as there being no way that Barricade's missiles could reach Tamaguchi, why? Textev states that Manty missiles have a lower acceleration than the Cataphracts but a much longer burn time.

Query: Since Barricade's missiles were launched at an even lower acceleration than possible, does that not increase burn time?

An aside:

Regarding firing CMs offbore. How exactly is that accomplished? Wouldn't the offbore launch have to have a much lower acceleration?

Indeed, the Manties only lost two of their own birds from Barricade, which really makes it seem even more of a waste that the survivors did not continue on for more appointments of doom and destruction...

The computers say they only lost two of their own birds—must’ve been to direct collisions, since there wasn’t any wedge fratricide, although I’d hate to try to figure the odds of kinetic intercepts in that kind of volume to do that. So we handed them a nice, tight target, and they just cut the crap right out of it with their shipkillers’ wedges!”

Vangelis felt the blood draining out of his face, and the tac officer shook his head slowly, wearily, like a very old man.
“It wasn’t very efficient,” he said. “From a cost effectiveness perspective, taking them out this way instead of using standard CMs must’ve cost at least a hundred times as much for each kill, not to mention using up a slew of missiles they won’t have to use as shipkillers now. But it damned well worked, and the cost per kill’s going to come down, because they’re about to do the same thing to all our other launches. The computers say they only lost two of their own birds—must’ve been to direct collisions, since there wasn’t any wedge fratricide, although I’d hate to try to figure the odds of kinetic intercepts in that kind of volume—and they’re already reorienting. In fact, they’ve already passed through our second launch, and they’re bearing down on number three.”

I'm surprised that Tamaguchi could so quickly see that Barricade's missiles were actually reorienting. Lacking FTL.