Battle of Spindle

Jonathan_S wrote:Although at 2nd Hancock, when Shrikes were first used, the Peeps had some success firing missiles past the LAC and having their laserheads target backwards into the open kilt of the LAC's wedge!! That makes a perpendicularly passing shot like we've been discussing look easy

"Most of the Shrikes lost at Second Hancock had, in fact, been killed by "up-the-kilt" laser head snap shots at close range—exactly the sort of attack the designers had believed would be impossible. But while the firing solutions for that sort of attack against something as small and agile as a Shrike were, indeed, difficult to generate, the odds of success were much better than prebattle analyses had projected, and it took only a single one of them to kill an LAC." [AoV]

Whenever Laserheads have been "intricately" spoken of, we see the laserheads acting in a coordinated attack mode, aimed at one target.

However...

Would it be possible that laserheads also have an omni- directional or Cartoid-directional mode, where the laser heads fire in different directions or a general direction? Omni seems much harder, as the Nuke need to be focused by a grav lens on the laserheads to work, but a Cartoid pattern may be possible, allowing a shotgun effect of laserheads. A salvo of such missiles would get far fewer hits, but a higher chance of hitting a fleeting target such as a Shrike open aspect.

kzt wrote:No, for some reason a missile hitting the sidewalk does nothing. Unless it has a sidewalk penetrator, which essentially ejects the warhead through the sidewalk to go off close to the ship. No warhead, no effect.

Realistically, the ships particle screens are capable of casually frying a missile size and missile velocity rock. It’s the wedge that makes are missile direct hit so deadly.

That was the way things worked at the time that laser heads replaced impact heads but that doesn't mean it's still the case. We know energy gets through a sidewall with attenuation and it's obvious a sidewall can't actually destroy the mass of something that hits it.

In the old days consider what happens--the missile impacts the sidewall, it's vaporized and much of it's energy is liberated. This spreads the energy out, there miles for it to spread and then there's the armor. It probably damages the paint job and that's about it.

Now, however, it's hitting with vastly more energy. The energy of motion that is liberated doesn't show up as basically omnidirectional x-rays but as very hard gammas that are strongly concentrated in the line of motion of the missile. It's not as focused as a laser head but it's several orders of magnitude more powerful--devastating energy should reach the hull. Furthermore, the energy that doesn't get liberated by the sidewall remains with the plasma that was once the missile--it now has nowhere near as much time to disperse so it actually hits in a very small area and it's up there in the hundreds of millions of degrees.

Theemile wrote:Would it be possible that laserheads also have an omni- directional or Cartoid-directional mode, where the laser heads fire in different directions or a general direction? Omni seems much harder, as the Nuke need to be focused by a grav lens on the laserheads to work, but a Cartoid pattern may be possible, allowing a shotgun effect of laserheads. A salvo of such missiles would get far fewer hits, but a higher chance of hitting a fleeting target such as a Shrike open aspect.

1) The mechanics of a bomb-pumped lasers mean that each rod's energy will be multiplied by the cosine of the angle between it's actual orientation and it's ideal orientation. You want your lasers pretty much in a plane.

2) You're basically looking at firing randomly. Laser standoff range at this point is about 50,000km. Such a sphere has a surface area of 3.14E10 km^2. If the Shrike is 1km^2 (and I don't think it's anything like that!) you have a 1 in 30 billion chance of hitting.

Loren Pechtel wrote: If the Shrike is 1km^2 (and I don't think it's anything like that!) you have a 1 in 30 billion chance of hitting.

So you say there is a chance?

It's actually 20mx20m on the tail. You have to aim very carefully.

Also, given that a shrike has no armor and essentially no nonvital systems I'm not sure how dispersing a missile x-ray beam designed to punch a hole in the side of an SD actually works. It means that instead of having a 5 meter wide hole blown all the way lengthwise through the full 71 meters and out the front you get a 20 meter wide hole blown through only about 30 meters of the LAC.

Sounds like only minor damage to me...

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Theemile wrote:Would it be possible that laserheads also have an omni- directional or Cartoid-directional mode, where the laser heads fire in different directions or a general direction? Omni seems much harder, as the Nuke need to be focused by a grav lens on the laserheads to work, but a Cartoid pattern may be possible, allowing a shotgun effect of laserheads. A salvo of such missiles would get far fewer hits, but a higher chance of hitting a fleeting target such as a Shrike open aspect.

1) The mechanics of a bomb-pumped lasers mean that each rod's energy will be multiplied by the cosine of the angle between it's actual orientation and it's ideal orientation. You want your lasers pretty much in a plane.

2) You're basically looking at firing randomly. Laser standoff range at this point is about 50,000km. Such a sphere has a surface area of 3.14E10 km^2. If the Shrike is 1km^2 (and I don't think it's anything like that!) you have a 1 in 30 billion chance of hitting.

Back in the day when they were working on "Star Wars" missile defense, multiple lasing rods to engage multiple missiles seemed to make sense. Even then the concept art portrayed the ends of lasing rods being in physical contact with the bomb casing. Given the tactics i the Honorverse where each missile can attack only one star ship, a unitary lssing rod or a parallel bundle of lasing rods incorporated in the bomb casing would be far more logical.

Teller’s concept was for much closer range than the honorverse. Exactly what he was proposing is a bit unclear because the details are classified. The presumed need for a targeting sensor and aiming system on each rod seemed pretty pricey. This assumes the x-Ray emission process tests actually worked, which seems unclear based on open-source documents.

kzt wrote:Teller’s concept was for much closer range than the honorverse. Exactly what he was proposing is a bit unclear because the details are classified. The presumed need for a targeting sensor and aiming system on each rod seemed pretty pricey. This assumes the x-Ray emission process tests actually worked, which seems unclear based on open-source documents.

Teller was attempting to evade paniced criticism of using nuclear weapons as ABM weapons by suggesting that one bomb could intercept a dozen or more ICBMs. IMHO, using one kiloton range, bomb pumped X-ray laser to take out one SS-18 armed with 10 MIRV, half Megaton warheads possibly targeted at American cities or missile silos (with huge fallout effects) was obviously a good thing. We hadcome a long way from the days of when it was acceptable to arm interceptor aircraft with low yield nuclear armed missiles to destroy incoming bombers.

Just FYI, theory suggested that while the lasing rods would be pumped by X-rays and Gamma-Rays from the nuclear explosion, the actual lasing process would be expedited the shockwave. Physical proximity was absolutely mandatory.


Of course we already have technology to build shaped nuclear charges that can theoretically generate higher energy density at stand off ranges than the proposed X-ray lasers.

Theemile wrote: Would it be possible that laserheads also have an omni- directional or Cartoid-directional mode, where the laser heads fire in different directions or a general direction? Omni seems much harder, as the Nuke need to be focused by a grav lens on the laserheads to work, but a Cartoid pattern may be possible, allowing a shotgun effect of laserheads. A salvo of such missiles would get far fewer hits, but a higher chance of hitting a fleeting target such as a Shrike open aspect.

Loren Pechtel wrote:1) The mechanics of a bomb-pumped lasers mean that each rod's energy will be multiplied by the cosine of the angle between it's actual orientation and it's ideal orientation. You want your lasers pretty much in a plane.

2) You're basically looking at firing randomly. Laser standoff range at this point is about 50,000km. Such a sphere has a surface area of 3.14E10 km^2. If the Shrike is 1km^2 (and I don't think it's anything like that!) you have a 1 in 30 billion chance of hitting.

kzt wrote:So you say there is a chance?

It's actually 20mx20m on the tail. You have to aim very carefully.

Also, given that a shrike has no armor and essentially no nonvital systems I'm not sure how dispersing a missile x-ray beam designed to punch a hole in the side of an SD actually works. It means that instead of having a 5 meter wide hole blown all the way lengthwise through the full 71 meters and out the front you get a 20 meter wide hole blown through only about 30 meters of the LAC.

Sounds like only minor damage to me...

Calling that "minor damage" has to be an example of your dry humor; since the Shrike is so small, it has to be packed without room for anything unessential - so that is almost 10,000 cubic meters of "stuff" that makes the Shrike work.

The diagram in the book showed the rods roughly aligned with the missile path, but it requires little imagination to realize that they have to be capable of pointing at an arbitrary vector from the flight path. As long as they are close to parallel to each other (not just in a plane), there will be some deviation; but that is not the same as firing randomly - so the comparison of the area of a sphere with the standoff radius to the area of the target is meaningless.

tlb wrote:Calling that "minor damage" has to be an example of your dry humor; since the Shrike is so small, it has to be packed without room for anything unessential - so that is almost 10,000 cubic meters of "stuff" that makes the Shrike work.

"It's just a flesh wound."

kzt wrote:

tlb wrote:Calling that "minor damage" has to be an example of your dry humor; since the Shrike is so small, it has to be packed without room for anything unessential - so that is almost 10,000 cubic meters of "stuff" that makes the Shrike work.

"It's just a flesh wound."

"I'LL BITE YOUR KNEE CAPS!"