Battle of Spindle

SharkHunter wrote:OR -- in Filereta's Folly, maybe if he'd had about 25% of his forces aimed at Gryphon or a percentage to threaten the junction, etc. at least it doesn't fit all the SLN forces into what is effectively a "kill box" as easily. The MAlign can't then do a "kill the flag deck" with one bomb thing, etc.

That means dividing his forces, something you do not want to do against a powerful opponent. He had no idea of how overwhelming the missile storm would be but he knew Manticoran missiles were dangerous, he would want the maximum possible defenses against them.

While it would have prevented the decapitation it would have weakened his force, he wouldn't have done it.

Galactic Sapper wrote:I'm pretty sure the first thing we're going to see is a class of destroyers specialized solely for missile defense, built in massive numbers to screen whatever capital ships the SL devise to meet the MDM threat. Basically replicating the Katana fleet defense function in purpose built hyper capable hulls since that can be done faster than the LAC/carrier combo can be from scratch. With the SL industrial capacity, even building a thousand of them and then scrapping them three years later isn't the complete waste of resources it would be for anyone else.

The SLN has no counter for the dazzlers. Thus countermissiles are little more than wasted space, it all comes down to point defense lasers--and they're not very effective in an environment with dragon's teeth and missiles coming in at more than half of lightspeed.

Before the SLN comes up with a specialized defense ship they need to come up with defenses that work.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:And again, there were 1500 orphaned 23E's and at least 5000 orphaned dazzlers and dragons teeth with nothing else to do.

The 23E's have to be behind and might have a pretty narrow cone of where until their birds are spent and thus might not be able to make the intercept, but the dazzlers are spent when the enter countermissile range--plenty of time to line up and ram. The dragon's teeth still have a mission but I don't see anything about the geometry that should keep them from trying to ram.

Due to it's extreme deadliness I do not think ramming will actually happen other than against an idiot--the threat of ramming will force the defender to keep his wedges to the missile storm and thus degrade his ability to shoot at it. It's like covering fire is meant to keep the enemy's head down rather than to actually kill him.

Until the very latest MA ship types, missile defenses can't work around a wedge like that. Certainly Sollie counter missiles can't fire off bore like MA ships can. Even MA ships as new as Star Knights can't fire counter missiles off bore or even track incoming missiles well enough to effectively use point defense clusters when the missile clear the edge of the wedge. On the contrary, every Solarian ship is designed to fight broadside on to the missile storm as that's the only way to bring their defenses to bear.

As much as has been theory crafted about missiles ramming, it seems like the introduction of the laser head has dropped that from design considerations on modern missiles. It just doesn't happen any more.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:I'm pretty sure the first thing we're going to see is a class of destroyers specialized solely for missile defense, built in massive numbers to screen whatever capital ships the SL devise to meet the MDM threat. Basically replicating the Katana fleet defense function in purpose built hyper capable hulls since that can be done faster than the LAC/carrier combo can be from scratch. With the SL industrial capacity, even building a thousand of them and then scrapping them three years later isn't the complete waste of resources it would be for anyone else.

The SLN has no counter for the dazzlers. Thus countermissiles are little more than wasted space, it all comes down to point defense lasers--and they're not very effective in an environment with dragon's teeth and missiles coming in at more than half of lightspeed.

Before the SLN comes up with a specialized defense ship they need to come up with defenses that work.

No one - including Manticore - has a full counter to Dazzlers. Doesn't matter. Some of the CMs still make contact regardless, and some stopped missiles are better than no stopped missiles. And I didn't specify CMs at all, did I? It could be a DD class with no offensive missiles or energy weapons at all but the same PDL broadside as a SD and a dozen CM tubes.

I doubt that Anti-missle destroyers are going to work the way you think they are going to work. Using LACs configured for CM defence makes practical sense as they are small and quick enough with enough stealth and ECM to be very hard targets to lock-up and after they have used up their CM missiles they still have energy weapons. That runs from the clusters to the grazers that they carry. They can be vectored to just outside the firing solutions for the opponents missles and are essentialy shooting into the stream from the side. If they get into the flight paths, the missiles may or may not recognise them as targets and they would then be fireing at things that were comming in around or over them.

Something the size of a DD is going to automatically get painted as a target, even if it is outside the flight trajectory of the incomming fire. Somebody is going to see it even if the missles ignore it as being "too close" to where they were launched and they are looking to engage much further down the path.
You might get away with something bigger which also had the ability to handle a much larger spread of it's own CM's (and many more CM tubes) plus more in the way of energy clusters. Sort of the compromise of the AA Crusiers in WW II. They didn't quite give up the ability to hurt surface combatants but the dual 5" mounts -and there were a lot more of them along with more 40mm and 20mm multi-gun mounts. They were optomised for AA fire to cover primarily the carriers but they could put up a big spread for themsleves.

DD's (and lighter) for AA cover and point control was what you ended up with at Okinawa and other islands. You rotated ships out to a point in the direction of probable air attack (from land based planes) and then they ALL ended up being more or less sponges for absorbing Kamakazi and regualr air attacks. They were all hurt and many were destroyed. They served three functions. They were the furthest relativaly stable early warning platforms between their radar and optical watch against air attacks on the island and the fleet near it. They were gun platforms to start shooting down aircraft headed in the direction of the island and fleet. They were also a way to recover our own pilots who would end up engaging other aircraft well out from the carriers. Of course, the ships themselves were also endeing up being the default targets for the incomming fighters and bombers.

Brigade XO wrote:I doubt that Anti-missle destroyers are going to work the way you think they are going to work. Using LACs configured for CM defence makes practical sense as they are small and quick enough with enough stealth and ECM to be very hard targets to lock-up and after they have used up their CM missiles they still have energy weapons. That runs from the clusters to the grazers that they carry. They can be vectored to just outside the firing solutions for the opponents missles and are essentialy shooting into the stream from the side. If they get into the flight paths, the missiles may or may not recognise them as targets and they would then be fireing at things that were comming in around or over them.

Something the size of a DD is going to automatically get painted as a target, even if it is outside the flight trajectory of the incomming fire. Somebody is going to see it even if the missles ignore it as being "too close" to where they were launched and they are looking to engage much further down the path.
You might get away with something bigger which also had the ability to handle a much larger spread of it's own CM's (and many more CM tubes) plus more in the way of energy clusters. Sort of the compromise of the AA Crusiers in WW II. They didn't quite give up the ability to hurt surface combatants but the dual 5" mounts -and there were a lot more of them along with more 40mm and 20mm multi-gun mounts. They were optomised for AA fire to cover primarily the carriers but they could put up a big spread for themsleves.

DD's (and lighter) for AA cover and point control was what you ended up with at Okinawa and other islands. You rotated ships out to a point in the direction of probable air attack (from land based planes) and then they ALL ended up being more or less sponges for absorbing Kamakazi and regualr air attacks. They were all hurt and many were destroyed. They served three functions. They were the furthest relativaly stable early warning platforms between their radar and optical watch against air attacks on the island and the fleet near it. They were gun platforms to start shooting down aircraft headed in the direction of the island and fleet. They were also a way to recover our own pilots who would end up engaging other aircraft well out from the carriers. Of course, the ships themselves were also endeing up being the default targets for the incomming fighters and bombers.

I didn't say they were ideal. They're something the SL can make, now, while working on something better. And if they get clobbered by missiles aimed at the wall behind them, well, it's harsh but that's what they're there for - keeping the wall in action long enough to take out the enemy.

And contrary to what you posted, the preferred class of LAC for missile defense is the Katana, which does NOT have a significant energy armament to back up its CM/Viper launchers. It has heavy point defense that can take out other LACs at very close range but wouldn't do much but mar the paint on anything more substantial than an LAC.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:The 23E's have to be behind and might have a pretty narrow cone of where until their birds are spent and thus might not be able to make the intercept, but the dazzlers are spent when the enter countermissile range--plenty of time to line up and ram. The dragon's teeth still have a mission but I don't see anything about the geometry that should keep them from trying to ram.

Due to it's extreme deadliness I do not think ramming will actually happen other than against an idiot--the threat of ramming will force the defender to keep his wedges to the missile storm and thus degrade his ability to shoot at it. It's like covering fire is meant to keep the enemy's head down rather than to actually kill him.

Until the very latest MA ship types, missile defenses can't work around a wedge like that. Certainly Sollie counter missiles can't fire off bore like MA ships can. Even MA ships as new as Star Knights can't fire counter missiles off bore or even track incoming missiles well enough to effectively use point defense clusters when the missile clear the edge of the wedge. On the contrary, every Solarian ship is designed to fight broadside on to the missile storm as that's the only way to bring their defenses to bear.

As much as has been theory crafted about missiles ramming, it seems like the introduction of the laser head has dropped that from design considerations on modern missiles. It just doesn't happen any more.

Which means the SLN will have to roll their wedges before the missiles arrive--shutting down their ability to shoot at them.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Which means the SLN will have to roll their wedges before the missiles arrive--shutting down their ability to shoot at them.

No. As much as you want it to be a thing, RFC seems to have decided it is not. We have never been given an instance where a missile attempted to ram a ship since the introduction of the laser head.

Galactic Sapper wrote:No one - including Manticore - has a full counter to Dazzlers. Doesn't matter. Some of the CMs still make contact regardless, and some stopped missiles are better than no stopped missiles. And I didn't specify CMs at all, did I? It could be a DD class with no offensive missiles or energy weapons at all but the same PDL broadside as a SD and a dozen CM tubes.

Plus given how long it takes to design and build a ship the SLN would want to commit to such an anti-missile ship before they were sure they'd improved their CMs and systems enough to make it really effective.

After all it's much easier to swap out a magazine of CMs for newer ones with more capable sensors than it is to build a new ship once you've got CMs worth carrying. (Assuming the new CM isn't physically larger)

Plus a lot of the counter the dragon's teeth is better programming - doing a better job of using the shipboard sensors to discriminate between the real threats and the fake sensor readings. So many of the improvements will be a matter of uploading better programs.

So the fact that their current CMs and systems today are nearly hopeless against RMN attacks isn't much of a reason to delay starting work on classes that you can reasonable expect to become more effective against the now-current threats as programming and possibly missile sensors improve.

Missile defense DDs aren't necessarily the best approach, but they're one that can be built fairly rapidly compared to other methods and can expect to have improved anti-missile capabilities waiting by the time they start getting out of the yards in any numbers - and hope to have continued updates available over time.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Which means the SLN will have to roll their wedges before the missiles arrive--shutting down their ability to shoot at them.

No. As much as you want it to be a thing, RFC seems to have decided it is not. We have never been given an instance where a missile attempted to ram a ship since the introduction of the laser head.

Has decided, or hasn't considered that MDMs given a full run hit so hard that attempting to ram is a good idea.