Battle of Spindle

Dauntless wrote:Kzt, Cthia you are both right.

standard missiles, even Mk 23s are fairly stupid.

the 23E is pretty intelligent, for an honorverse missile, being twice the size of a standard mk 23 missile giving the RMN the needed room for to make this work.

that said i'm not convinced, that the 23E could be used as a rammer after its attack missiles have gone in but I can see why Cthia and others say it could work.

Going to need RFC to weigh in before we can really say yea or nay to the idea.

Kzt is simply pointing out to me that for some reason the author doesn't want to go down that road, although certain things are inferred from implication of textev. That's what I take away from it, anyway, and I thank him.

Revisiting . . .

And DW has already said, you cannot turn a missiles sensor away from target without it losing its brains... So, a realistic angle is at best 30 degrees and from forum posts seems to indicate it is MUCH narrower than this in his mind.

Good Luck. Other than a direct chase or head on collision where the enemy is so stupid as to not angle at all, a ramming scenario is impossible.

The difference in the field of view can be explained by the mechanics of the application and its two different modes. For sake of argument, let's say a 23-Es FOV is 30 degrees, this is when it is in "seek" mode. This means the missile is constantly scanning a 30 degree radar sweep of the heavens looking for targets. Once it identifies a suspect from its radar returns, it switches to "tracking" mode and narrows its field of view and focuses more radar on the suspect area, fine tuning its resolution from the increased radar returns. This results in a much clearer image of the target. It is now "locked on" the target. Call it a missiles' tunnel vision.

In seek mode, the missile is scanning a larger area and the radar it is sending is weaker, spread about a larger area. Akin to spreading missile fire among many ships at once. Once it switches to tracking mode, the radar becomes more focused and stronger. Akin to missiles targeting only one ship.

Though I don't know what is meant by, or why it has to "lose its brains."

However, stupid? Someone please explain!

kzt wrote:Sorry, no. David postulates really stupid missiles. Like so stupid that they can’t calculate an intercept and execute it without having their sensors constantly on the target. Like so stupid that they don’t talk to each other, much less share sensor data to refine their sensor pictures via interfometry. They are very very dumb and have a very low chance of hitting a target without active control by the launch ship.

It's not that they are actually that stupid, it's that the mechanics of the system give them a very narrow field of view. They need to be pointed at a target and keep their eyeball on it, if their gaze wanders they will have little chance of finding it again.

Think 1960s-1970s anti-ship missiles. Like the one in the board game Harpoon, which I’m told was David’s mental model of missile combat.

And their are obvious issues with this in the Hororverse. Write your own books if you can’t deal with David’s universe quirks.

I played the computer version of that board game. The missiles weren't actually all that stupid, it's that they had very short range seekers. You needed external sensors to guide them to within the acquisition radius or they would miss. (There were also some software issues, such as a missile that lost lock would go for the last point the target was seen rather than the projection of where it would be had it continued as it had been moving. It also didn't check line of sight for fire control--if an airborne radar could see the inbound anything could guide missiles to it even if it was below the horizon to the fire control radar. This meant that SAM defenses were far more effective against sea-skimmers than they should have been. Kill the airborne radar and sea-skimmers became deadly.)

Weird Harold wrote:There is a reason that everyone uses laserhead and not contact missiles -- You can actually hit something useful.

Except the switch to the laserhead was made because point defense got so good that contact heads had little chance of getting through. The laser head traded less damage for a far greater chance of getting some damage.

The MDM has changed this again, in general there should be no point defense at all as a missile closes from laser range to contact range. (It will go through this far faster than the point defense lasers can recharge. If the wave is properly time-on-target the defenders should have already used every laser they have.) These days the restriction on contact heads is they only work if the enemy doesn't roll.

I'm saying to program a backup ramming ability into the 23-Es and the dazzlers to attrit decoys and to ensure the enemy rolls--thus weakening his defenses.

Point defenses had gotten that good at least a hundred years earlier. That’s why they went to sidewalk burners, which went off outside the grav gun lethal range.

Weird Harold wrote:There is a reason that everyone uses laserhead and not contact missiles -- You can actually hit something useful.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm saying to program a backup ramming ability into the 23-Es and the dazzlers to attrit decoys and to ensure the enemy rolls--thus weakening his defenses.

laserheads exist beaus it is so hard to physically intersect the a target. As defenses have gotten better a physical impact has gotten exponentiationly more difficult.

cthia wrote:
Though I don't know what is meant by, or why it has to "lose its brains."

However, stupid? Someone please explain!

Simple, in classic missiles, the radio receiver on the back of the missile needs to be pointed at the launching ship to get targeting updates. if you block the LOS to the ship's transmitter with the wedge that is trailing 5km behind the missile by turning too sharply (which is not much), the missile becomes stupid and on it's own - because the brains are in the ship...

Weird Harold wrote:There is a reason that everyone uses laserhead and not contact missiles -- You can actually hit something useful.

Sure, that's why a ramming attack is unlike to cause damage. There's almost guaranteed to be a sidewall or wedge in the way and nothing to turn against missiles in outer space can't make the kind of tight turns that one about to use aerodynamic forces can pull in the atmosphere (or a can can pull on a road). You spend 7 or 8 minutes building up an MDMs speed in one direction you just can't turn a corner in the last minute or two of drive life (change your heading by a lot; no problem. You can even deflect your path to the side more than a few hundred km - but you're still traveling almost along your original course at a hefty fraction of the speed of light)


OTOH what else are those missiles going to do after they attack birds' laserheads go off? At least simulate an attack profile or a 'contact' nuke or sidewall burner attack. (which is either bore straight in at the sidewall or try to pass by no more than 4,500 km or so from the target as you clear an interveneing wedge) The target can't be 100% sure that its a harmless decoy/ECM or control missile and so it should at minimum draw defensive fire that would otherwise be directed at follow-up attack missiles that are actually more dangerous to it.

And hey, every once in a blue moon the helmsman is going to do something stupid or you're going to be in a stern chase and you just might be on an angle to reach the ship without hitting a sidewall. You'll probably still be shot down - but that draws fire away from follow up missiles)


But if the target is foolish enough to start ignoring those "spent" missiles then a savvy tac officer would take advantage by send in a few missiles that really were 'contact' nukes or sidewall burners pretending to be decoy/ECM or control missiles

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:
Though I don't know what is meant by, or why it has to "lose its brains."

However, stupid? Someone please explain!

Simple, in classic missiles, the radio receiver on the back of the missile needs to be pointed at the launching ship to get targeting updates. if you block the LOS to the ship's transmitter with the wedge that is trailing 5km behind the missile by turning too sharply (which is not much), the missile becomes stupid and on it's own - because the brains are in the ship...

I thought that only applied to prehistoric Manty missiles and all Peep missiles. Because. . . enter autonomous mode. Autonomy means independent. Something many parents spend all their lives hoping one day their kids will become. LOL

I'd call these missiles anything BUT stupid.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:There is a reason that everyone uses laserhead and not contact missiles -- You can actually hit something useful.

Sure, that's why a ramming attack is unlike to cause damage. There's almost guaranteed to be a sidewall or wedge in the way and nothing to turn against missiles in outer space can't make the kind of tight turns that one about to use aerodynamic forces can pull in the atmosphere (or a can can pull on a road). You spend 7 or 8 minutes building up an MDMs speed in one direction you just can't turn a corner in the last minute or two of drive life (change your heading by a lot; no problem. You can even deflect your path to the side more than a few hundred km - but you're still traveling almost along your original course at a hefty fraction of the speed of light)


OTOH what else are those missiles going to do after they attack birds' laserheads go off? At least simulate an attack profile or a 'contact' nuke or sidewall burner attack. (which is either bore straight in at the sidewall or try to pass by no more than 4,500 km or so from the target as you clear an interveneing wedge) The target can't be 100% sure that its a harmless decoy/ECM or control missile and so it should at minimum draw defensive fire that would otherwise be directed at follow-up attack missiles that are actually more dangerous to it.

And hey, every once in a blue moon the helmsman is going to do something stupid or you're going to be in a stern chase and you just might be on an angle to reach the ship without hitting a sidewall. You'll probably still be shot down - but that draws fire away from follow up missiles)


But if the target is foolish enough to start ignoring those "spent" missiles then a savvy tac officer would take advantage by send in a few missiles that really were 'contact' nukes or sidewall burners pretending to be decoy/ECM or control missiles

First thing. Personally, I would only categorize the era of unguided missiles as stupid. When missiles acquired the ability to seek, begat a level of intelligence.


MK 23-E and its brood. Here you have a missile that knows when an enemy ship has made a grievous tactical maneuver, setting itself up for a mate-in-three. I was under the impression that that damn missile starts homing like a bitch in heat, tracking like a hound dog that's caught the scent of prey, and it's going in for the kill, looking - no, scrambling - for a specific up the kilt shot. A kill shot. This is not a general warhead pleasantly going off at standoff range. And it implies a certain level of maneuverability. When a missile starts maneuvering for a specific shot like that, trying to sniff the butt of the enemy ship, requires crunching some serious triangular functions, lots of splines. It's trying to ram the sparkler right up the ship's ass, then set off the laser show. I can't refer to a missile with that kind of ability as stupid. Dangerous for damn sure. But stupid?

"Hey, we got any more of those stupid missiles on the assembly line? They're real popular."

At any rate, how does a missile make those kinds of maneuvers if Jonathan's logic is correct. How did Honor's 3-missile demo pull off those elaborate ballet moves? Coming in at tremendous speed, enough to cause the crew to soil their proverbial undies, then pulling up, pirouetting and hitting each other?

An aside: It was never clear to me whether being able to recognize an opportunity for an "up the kilt" shot is an ability of all missiles, or just Manty missiles. If it is an ability of all missiles, like I imagine. Then that upholds my notion, since missiles in general (inherently) are already generally smart. Just saying.

I know if you cross one's T, "guns" can fire down the throat or up the kilt. But can the average missile of any navy seek a specific up the kilt shot if it recognizes being put in a mate-in-three position?

Jonathan_S wrote:OTOH what else are those missiles going to do after they attack birds' laserheads go off?

Self-destruct in such a way that there is 0.000000000% chance of an enemy finding a shred if usefulness information?

Preserving secret should be they priority, pointless spitballs.