Hybrid missile/Graser Torp

Brigade XO wrote:Until RMN or somebody comes up with a way to detect a Spider Drive in use, targeting a Graser Trop or a LennyDet class or any other Spider Drive ship is going to be almost by luck or the target doing something like occluding a light source and having that noticed by a sensor on a ship's or System Defense sensor net.

Even something analogous to using a hydrophone to detect a submarine's engine noise or the sounds made by it's disturbance of the water it's passing through would be a fantastic help. Next step would be an analog of sonar, then up to radar.

They are working on it. Grayson is probably also do that and they share information. At this point PRH is as well and it is highly likely that Manticore has shared what they have with the IAE.
The more minds working for as many angles as possible will help.

Whether radar would work depends on how smart the smart coating is for the Malign ships, but I am not sure whether the graser torpedoes have such a coating.

Grayson, Manticore and Haven have joint research going on at Bolthole - I expect.

Quibble: I do not believe that it has been the People's Republic of Haven (PRH) since the restoration of the Constitution; perhaps since the shooting of St. Just.

Brigade XO wrote:Until RMN or somebody comes up with a way to detect a Spider Drive in use, targeting a Graser Trop or a LennyDet class or any other Spider Drive ship is going to be almost by luck or the target doing something like occluding a light source and having that noticed by a sensor on a ship's or System Defense sensor net.

Even something analogous to using a hydrophone to detect a submarine's engine noise or the sounds made by it's disturbance of the water it's passing through would be a fantastic help. Next step would be an analog of sonar, then up to radar.

They are working on it. Grayson is probably also do that and they share information. At this point PRH is as well and it is highly likely that Manticore has shared what they have with the IAE.
The more minds working for as many angles as possible will help.

Your post just reminded me of one reason why its important to rotate officers in and out of different assignments. I don't suppose the powers that be will be able to spare Foraker or Hemphill to play musical chairs. But it sure would be invaluable if Shannon could pass down her uncanny skills as a tac witch. Maybe even share a few spells, or teach her outstanding ability as a masseuse on the 'puters. May come in handy if one of Shannon's protégés is the tac officer on the spot, when the MA come a calling for real. Can't you just hear her now, in the spirit of her idol . . .

"Something appears a little screwy on my screen."

kzt wrote:There is absolutely no evidence presented that the RMN has taken any countermeasures whatsoever against the threat of spider weapons. None at all. See how the fleet at the Beowulf WH had their wedges down.

But that was at Beowulf. Pulling at straws, the MBS might not have been expecting to be downgraded, or rather, displaced, as a priority target. Perhaps DEFCON 3 only in the MBS. Albeit, there seems to be absolutely no excuse for operating in a system where they're definitely expecting SL warships, with wedges down. What is that saying "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

I do agree there seems to have been no headway made in detecting the stealthy buggers. In fact, the RMN's Project Gram seems to have been knocked back on its heels a step or three, seeing as though Mycroft's own Achilles heel has been exposed. I'd think that would be as devastating to Manty R&D as it would have been if Haven had knocked back the hellish effectiveness of the RMNs damned ECM. Well, maybe not quite as bad, but still.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

cthia wrote:Oh là là ! Nice thread! I was anticipating a thread like this myself, delving inside MA tech. I'll just post it here . . .

INSIDE MALIGN TECH: STRATEGIC and TACTICAL OPTIONS

SNIPPED

I was wondering what impact it will have on MA tech if they happen to reproduce the Manty micro fusion plant. We all know what impact Grayson's brainchild had across the board on Manty tech.

The Graysons developed the fission plant, not the fusion plant. From HOS:

June 1852 PD
“Jonas, have you seen this article on fusion bottle density?” Roger Winton was looking down at the reader’s display, scrolling for the specific reference he wanted to discuss as he followed a scampering Monroe into Jonas Adcock’s familiar office. “It says here that Grendel University’s getting some unexpected results, and I’m wondering if that ties into what Grierson’s been doing on Raiden. If it does, then—”

They were working on that one a LOOOONNG time, Cthia. And didn't get it into missiles until Ghost Rider circa 1910?

Rob

Thanks Rob. But what effect across the board will stealing the secrets of the fission plant have on MA tech? If the Alignment can manage the same enormous power budget per liter of displacement (big block engines, baby), may the fat lady sing?

cthia wrote:Oh là là ! Nice thread! I was anticipating a thread like this myself, delving inside MA tech. I'll just post it here . . .

INSIDE MALIGN TECH: STRATEGIC and TACTICAL OPTIONS

SNIPPED

I was wondering what impact it will have on MA tech if they happen to reproduce the Manty micro fusion plant. We all know what impact Grayson's brainchild had across the board on Manty tech.

Rob wrote:The Graysons developed the fission plant, not the fusion plant. From HOS:

Snipped the HOS quote.

They were working on that one a LOOOONNG time, Cthia. And didn't get it into missiles until Ghost Rider circa 1910?

Rob

cthia wrote:Thanks Rob. But what effect across the board will stealing the secrets of the fission plant have on MA tech? If the Alignment can manage the same enormous power budget per liter of displacement (big block engines, baby), may the fat lady sing?

No need for theft, really. When they go to researching it (they have some very good physicists) they will likely find a lot of the same starting data that Manticore got--from Uni-Grendal, or elsewhere. It came from the League in the first place, just no one pushed it as far as Project Gram did. And no one else was keeping such close tabs on other research centers as the Manties; likely no other system had people (reserve officers and enlisted) in so many ships running all over the place.

But a big university library supporting a cutting-edge physics department would subscribe to all those peer-review journals. . . .once they start looking.

The effect: a) graser torp goes on a diet; recon drones and ew emitters get drastically improved; but not missiles right off the bat. Even the Manties used capacitor based ones at first.

Incidently, we seem to have forgotten that the Manties improved their capacitor tech first, it was one reason why their missiles outranged Haven's at the start of the war. And a second improvement, maybe, became a big part of the development of the ERM/LERM and the Mk 41's.

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:No need for theft, really. When they go to researching it (they have some very good physicists) they will likely find a lot of the same starting data that Manticore got--from Uni-Grendal, or elsewhere. It came from the League in the first place, just no one pushed it as far as Project Gram did. And no one else was keeping such close tabs on other research centers as the Manties; likely no other system had people (reserve officers and enlisted) in so many ships running all over the place.

But a big university library supporting a cutting-edge physics department would subscribe to all those peer-review journals. . . .once they start looking.

The effect: a) graser torp goes on a diet; recon drones and ew emitters get drastically improved; but not missiles right off the bat. Even the Manties used capacitor based ones at first.

Incidently, we seem to have forgotten that the Manties improved their capacitor tech first, it was one reason why their missiles outranged Haven's at the start of the war. And a second improvement, maybe, became a big part of the development of the ERM/LERM and the Mk 41's.

Rob

Just some random related and unrelated thoughts, not well organized: sorry.

Lets take a ~ look. DW had 10 Cat I missiles/pod of unknown size firing Cataphracts I with ~16Mkm range. Now they have 6 firing CAT II C's with ~85k Gs(we saw a similar missile in HoTQ). SLN Cataphract I erm, uh... Technodyne/Malign missiles, with 49k Gs acceleration single stage, and now a Cat II has 85k G'single stage 180s capacitor fed and 100+k Gs CM head for ~24+Mkm.

10-->6 missiles/pod should mean ~50% increase in size. Where did size go? Impellers and capacitors achieving 85k Gs stage one and 85k G's stage 2 giving 24Mkm range which arrives sooner than DDM~46k Gs. Of course one has to ask, if such missiles existed in HotQ, why the HELL is every RMN/RHN missile for system defense not 3 stages of this? In fact, why did the MALIGN or some boffin in the SLN not simply dump two of these missiles end to end instead of a stupid CM drive? They are already externally fired, who cares about size. Unless the length is too long and falls outside of the Impeller drive tolerances which for a variable drive is only 15% of length PAST impeller nodes...

Of course this brings up another question, a tiny small SLN CM can tote along for 60s at 100,000-->120,000G hauling an entire capital SLN grade warhead.... What the Hell is wrong with the RMN? Several times larger CM, has slightly higher acceleration, and 25% longer burn(but several times the size), but can only manage a single laser rod with a very light warhead which is good against light units only? Uh, what am I missing? Gotta be something.

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Diff note: Rational

CAT I can be fired from BC tubes(yea I know Cat I B). Maybe those tubes can take a LONGER missile than the Javelin. Otherwise, a CATI B should run out of Capacitor POWER to MOVE the missile 180s because IF Javelin requires entire length of SLN BC tube, something must be removed. So, what should be removed was capacitors to graft the CM and a laser head on which are fixed dimensions and cannot be shrunk. Yet, they still ran at 180s. Maybe the SLN built REALLY long BC tubes for future increase in missile tech? Of course if this is the case it should be increase in diameter as that increases impeller size, volume MUCH more efficiently than increasing length. Or they just went the halfway house approach as they had no idea.

**********************

Either that or they have much MUCH superior built in compensators using vastly less energy than the Manties.

Just some random related and unrelated thoughts, not well organized: sorry.

Relax wrote:Just some random related and unrelated thoughts, not well organized: sorry.

Lets take a ~ look. DW had 10 Cat I missiles/pod of unknown size firing Cataphracts I with ~16Mkm range. Now they have 6 firing CAT II C's with ~85k Gs(we saw a similar missile in HoTQ). SLN Cataphract I erm, uh... Technodyne/Malign missiles, with 49k Gs acceleration single stage, and now a Cat II has 85k G'single stage 180s capacitor fed and 100+k Gs CM head for ~24+Mkm.

I pushed the rest of your post below, because this top part covers a lot of the issues.

Cataphract A= destroyer grade missile body and laserhead, can be fired from Sollie BC/CA or Haven Warlord/Mars tubes.

Cataphract B= Javelin (CA) missile body w/cruiser laserhead, can be fired from internal SD tubes.

Cataphract C = Trebuchet (SD)missile body and warhead, requires external pods.

If the base missile body is a standard missile, they likely ran the original at half power for the extra range; later they are "tweaking" the pod based missiles w/higher acceleration but iirc only at closer ranges for the 1st generation. Also, iirc, the base model Javelin and Trebuchet had a full power setting of 92K g's? The accel was somewhat higher than Manticore's, even on the first gen.

Size-wise, the counter missile drive add-on is a lot smaller than the regular missile, but it is still too big to fire from internal tubes without dropping down to the missile body for the next lower grade ship, so a cruiser or BC fires destroyer missiles, etc. For the second gen Cataphracts, the size probably did go for additional capacitor volume and better (more endurance) nodes. Same as what Haven did, when they introduced the Mars/Warlords with oversized missiles.

Given the state of Solarian ONI, they probably haven't figured out that the Manties improved the capacitors along with everything else.

regarding the issue of size and drives, I guess they used the counter missile drives instead of a second (and/or third) drive so it would be possible to load them into the internal magazines; even though that leaves the missile itself inferior to a standard single drive warhead for that class of ship.

Dunno if that will clarify your thinking--I am not a hardware type.

Rob

Relax wrote:10-->6 missiles/pod should mean ~50% increase in size. Where did size go? Impellers and capacitors achieving 85k Gs stage one and 85k G's stage 2 giving 24Mkm range which arrives sooner than DDM~46k Gs. Of course one has to ask, if such missiles existed in HotQ, why the HELL is every RMN/RHN missile for system defense not 3 stages of this? In fact, why did the MALIGN or some boffin in the SLN not simply dump two of these missiles end to end instead of a stupid CM drive? They are already externally fired, who cares about size. Unless the length is too long and falls outside of the Impeller drive tolerances which for a variable drive is only 15% of length PAST impeller nodes...

Of course this brings up another question, a tiny small SLN CM can tote along for 60s at 100,000-->120,000G hauling an entire capital SLN grade warhead.... What the Hell is wrong with the RMN? Several times larger CM, has slightly higher acceleration, and 25% longer burn(but several times the size), but can only manage a single laser rod with a very light warhead which is good against light units only? Uh, what am I missing? Gotta be something.

*************************

Diff note: Rational

CAT I can be fired from BC tubes(yea I know Cat I B). Maybe those tubes can take a LONGER missile than the Javelin. Otherwise, a CATI B should run out of Capacitor POWER to MOVE the missile 180s because IF Javelin requires entire length of SLN BC tube, something must be removed. So, what should be removed was capacitors to graft the CM and a laser head on which are fixed dimensions and cannot be shrunk. Yet, they still ran at 180s. Maybe the SLN built REALLY long BC tubes for future increase in missile tech? Of course if this is the case it should be increase in diameter as that increases impeller size, volume MUCH more efficiently than increasing length. Or they just went the halfway house approach as they had no idea.

**********************

Either that or they have much MUCH superior built in compensators using vastly less energy than the Manties.

Just some random related and unrelated thoughts, not well organized: sorry.

Relax wrote:PS: Anyone else notice how DW casually gave the MALIGN/SLN missiles the ability for 180s burn at 85,000G when the Manties can only achieve ~48,000... Of course it seems there was some fumble fingers doing calcs or voice recognition mistook fifty for eighty(my bet and no editor in sight) as the end velocity did not match reality during engagements, so, what gives? Of course if one remembers back to the bad ol' days of HoTQ, Havenite missiles, land based, were able to do this as well. So, WHY not on MDM's?

Yes. I'd been pointing out for a couple books now that while SLN missiles aren't mutidrive that their basic drive is a bit better than Manticore's (47,600 vs 46,000); but in Uncompromising Honor the drives in the Cataphracts got vastly better.

It might be fumble fingers doing the calcs, but text also gives up the drives endurance (180+75 seconds) and the powered envelope "almost thirty-two million klicks". And to get that range with that drive endurance you need 85,000 gees on the first stage and a ludicrous 250,000 gees on the second!

More likely RFC just needed the ranges to be drastically better without letting the SLN or MAlign design a "proper" DDM/MDM and that drove their unbelievable drive power breakthrough.

(Oddly Manticore's missiles got slightly slower between Ashes of Victory -- when at Barnett they could do 48,000 gees for 180 seconds -- and At All Costs where they'd reverted to 46,000 gees)

Relax wrote:Cruiser grade is the same for BC and CA and it still does not matter as both can easily penetrate SD sidewalls unless you wish to postulate that Laser heads are are like SD++++++ in power

CA missiles have historically been the same as BC missiles. The same isn't universally true for energy mounts; though based on the Jayne's books Broadsword and Star Knight CAs do carry the same 140cm broadside grasers as contemporary RMN BCs; the Crusader and Prince Consort-class CAs mount 120cm broadside grasers instead.

But there's some weird distance effect on coherent photonic weapons in the Honorverse. A ship can fire energy weapons through an opponent of roughly comparable strength from up to 500,000 km out. Less powerful ships seem to need to move to closer range when engaging more powerful ships, and laserheads won't penetrate beyond 50,000 km (1/10th the distance of a broadside mount).

So I'm not sure how close a CL or CA would need to be to fire through an SD's sidewall - but given how the Honorverse seems to work it's probably a lot closer than a DN would need to be. I'd bet on around 125,000 km. (And even then, through the sidewall it's going to be doing a lot less damage to the armor than an SD/DN shot from further out would likely do)

Relax wrote:Then again, RFC has never said top end acceleration of an RD... we just saw the SLN with 15,000G with 30% in reserve which means 20,000G so if 20k G is possible for SLN and no fusion bottles, I see no reason that the RMN could not as well. The only problem would be timing.

Not sure where I got it from but for some reason I've got stuck in my head that a Ghost Rider recon drone is capable of up to 5,000 gees while remaining fairly stealthy, or 10,000 gees flat out.

Storm from the Shadows does say "the Ghost Rider platforms, loping along at the low (for them) acceleration of only five thousand gravities in order to stay stealthy"

And Shadow of Victory says "the Ghost Rider drones sped ahead of them at 10,000 gravities" but looking again it doesn't explicitly say that's their max performance, only that Scotty wanted "those birds up forward to give him as close a look as possible at what CIC was calling eight battlecruisers and eight destroyers"

Jonathan_S wrote:Yes. I'd been pointing out for a couple books now that while SLN missiles aren't mutidrive that their basic drive is a bit better than Manticore's (47,600 vs 46,000); but in Uncompromising Honor the drives in the Cataphracts got vastly better.

It might be fumble fingers doing the calcs, but text also gives up the drives endurance (180+75 seconds) and the powered envelope "almost thirty-two million klicks". And to get that range with that drive endurance you need 85,000 gees on the first stage and a ludicrous 250,000 gees on the second!

More likely RFC just needed the ranges to be drastically better without letting the SLN or MAlign design a "proper" DDM/MDM and that drove their unbelievable drive power breakthrough.

(Oddly Manticore's missiles got slightly slower between Ashes of Victory -- when at Barnett they could do 48,000 gees for 180 seconds -- and At All Costs where they'd reverted to 46,000 gees)

Oi, missed the 32Mkm quote... Where??? and Wasn't there a ballistic component? I got the 24Mkm one which turns out to be 85,000G 1st 180s... and 100,000G 2nd 60s = 24.2Mkm 110kG@60s = 24.4Mkm 120kG = 24.6Mkm. --> Since I forget exact quote.

ANd yes 100% about idiotic reason 46,000 instead of 48,000 even though the only thing that changed was swapping super capacitors for Fusion power. Now I suppose one can argue smaller diameter impellers = worse performance, but <<COUGH>> Countermissiles...

What I still do not get is I was pretty danged sure you are only allowed 15% past the impeller ring... so how the Hell can you get an entire CM/Laser head on there...??? I can see a SINGLE lasing rod like the Viper, with rod sticking through the impeller ring, but now we get ENTIRE laser heads? WTH...

Now if you(uh, BuShips...) are going to claim that is for maximum efficiency.... then going with a less efficient design, the Cataphract should be INFERIOR for acceleration/mass/volume as this corresponds DIRECTLY to compensator volume/efficiency or so we have been told... Wave hands and say the MALIGN has broken this barrier? Possible I suppose.

Or are we going to say single impeller missiles have no barrier for volume/compensator efficiency... in which case, WTH does not EVERYONE already have a DDM? If all you have to do is detach laser head, graft it to a 2nd missile and fire it out a tube... this is absurdly easy...

Sorry, ever since introduction of Cataphract, all of the Honorverse rules for physics have essentially been violated. Pure handwavium now. Just kinda pissed me off. The power of Plot. Grrr

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Then again, RFC has never said top end acceleration of an RD... we just saw the SLN with 15,000G with 30% in reserve which means 20,000G so if 20k G is possible for SLN and no fusion bottles, I see no reason that the RMN could not as well. The only problem would be timing.

Not sure where I got it from but for some reason I've got stuck in my head that a Ghost Rider recon drone is capable of up to 5,000 gees while remaining fairly stealthy, or 10,000 gees flat out.

Storm from the Shadows does say "the Ghost Rider platforms, loping along at the low (for them) acceleration of only five thousand gravities in order to stay stealthy"

And Shadow of Victory says "the Ghost Rider drones sped ahead of them at 10,000 gravities" but looking again it doesn't explicitly say that's their max performance, only that Scotty wanted "those birds up forward to give him as close a look as possible at what CIC was calling eight battlecruisers and eight destroyers"

Just FYI: If 20k G's for an RD is possible, then obtaining 0.7C only requires a half hour... Since apparently you can put entire GRASERS on the bloody things.....

Means the RMN and everyone ELSE in the HV have Stealthed GRASER "missiles"..... Might not be as small as the MALIGN version, but who cares, in previous post we just showed that apparently compensator volumetric efficiency does not matter anymore...

Why the HELL does anyone have F'n missiles!??! Just use graser RD's incoming at 0.9C. Good luck localizing them.