Jonathan_S wrote:cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.
Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?
It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.
Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.
You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the
1st drive down early.
Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.
If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.
OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.
So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.
Jonathan_S wrote:cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.
Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?
It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.
Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.
You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the
1st drive down early.
Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.
If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.
OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.
So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.
Thanks for the post Jonathan. No, I don't think it'd be a slam dunk tactic either, or even a tactic that should be adopted against any traditional opponent. I was thinking more of a situational tactic as well, against an opponent whose ECM, as mentioned, proves to be rather difficult, again, like with the MA who I'm hoping comes out of the closet with quite a few new wrinkles - where more hits, or
some hits are better than little to none. I'm
imagining and predicting the Lenny Dets to be extremely hard to find touting ECM that makes them insanely effective against GA tech without a GA rabbit pulled out of the hat.
Lenny Dets: Advantages. Disadvantages.- Extremely stealthy and hard to hit.
- As brittle as eggshells against RMN missiles.
Considering range to target, I was thinking there might be a sweet spot where the loss of terminal velocity is made up for by optimal range to target and sheer numbers. A targeted ship always seem to take significant time to achieve missile lock of the incoming missile.
****** *
On another front . . .
For sake of argument, let's say the RMN can't control but 50 missiles but launched 200 in groups of four far enough apart to bounce control from group A to group B to group C to group D as group A goes into attack run. Seems it could be effectively achieved because of the optimal launching distances well inside the need for FTL.
There's an inherent problem with this solution, yes, but I always believed FTL could be used to establish initial control of different broods of missile groups instead of overcoming enormous distances. And/or even quickly bouncing updated position between groups.
I'm sure the tactics I've mentioned have been thought of before, with the application being so obvious. The difference I'm proposing is attempting to accomplish it well within sub light distances of sub light missile control that doesn't need FTL control in the first place, but utilizing it anyway to jockey control between groups of missiles - effectively overcoming the limitation of fire control and controlling more missiles - instead of using the advantage of FTL to overcome extreme distances. Think of an Indy 500 car racing around the track lapping a Yugo, updating the Yugo as to where it is.
I also wonder if group B thru C can be auto programmed to lock onto the wedges of the group ahead of them to follow them in. That would effectively eliminate the need to control three separate groups of missiles who are simply following the wedges in front of them.
I apologize for the jumbled thoughts for a path of logic whose plot hasn't completely settled in my head.
At any rate, FTL used to augment fire control instead of to overcome extreme firing range. Used in conjunction with shutting down drives to confuse an enemy's effective ECM. The RMN has never encountered an opponent whose ECM is on a par or better than theirs. But of course, that's where RMN advantage lay. However, I see Apollo as being more adaptable. Or rather, Honor does.
