Do we actually need SD(P)s?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:I'm wondering if Phantom is still mission killed but the Sag-Bs survive?

They would die too, since the Nevadas had internal tubes.

The question here is whether this strategy would have killed 70 BCs like the one that did happen accomplished. Or was would it be less? If it's less, then Arngrim may not be able to convince whoever is left in charge to stop the destruction of the Hypatia habitats with people aboard.

At 25mm kilometers, HMS Phantom would have been able to put pretty much all of their missiles into space before the SLN massive salvo reached them. The reason I think the Sag B's survive is based on this quote in UH:

I believe this is what the analysts call “overkill,” Kotouč thought wryly. I’m actually surprised he didn’t try to take us with just his internal tubes, given the numerical balance. Too bad he didn’t. Missile defense probably could’ve handled a mere five or six hundred missiles per ship!

So in my updated-by-posts-in-this-thread alternate scenario, Phantom launches early with the Loreleis appearing to be nine ships, attracting that entire 120K missile salvo his way. Then "time on target", the Sag-Bs open up at to put their salvo(s) on target at the same time as in the book sequence... but now the Sag-Bs missile defenses are only dealing with the surviving BC(s) tube-launched missiles.

That said, I find the way David wrote it to be quite moving, so I'm not complaining. Just playing armchair author-admiral.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Read Uncompromising Honor. A Rolland DD launched large numbers of counter missiles with delayed command activation and targeting.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Captain Golding wrote:Which raises the question why not deploy a salvo of CM's ballistically between you and an incoming long range missile burst. I am sure there are limits in Guidance ranges - a recon drone is an easier target - but if the salvo fires and can hit the incoming ASMs before their penitration aids/ ECM etc. is due to activate.....

Any hits are a gain but if the result is to double the CM engagement depth or only to cause the otherside to have to initiate their ECM earlier this should give the ship longer to identify real missiles or recover from blinding flash - dazzler. If their ECM budget runs out before they reach PDLC range then that again would be a big win.

If you are decellerating for a 0/0 or running for your life these would give the defender options. Sure not suitable for all geometries.

Might also be new technology. Either a new batch of CMs or some technology specific to Rolands before fleet-wide deployment. Either way, combined with not working in all geometries, it's possible we haven't heard about it more because skippers aren't yet used to it.

As for the geometry, the interesting thing is that you can actually choose to have it. No modern Can overwhelming # of LACsO is going to be caught at short distances, so they can choose to flip and begin decelerating for a few minutes even if they are far from the target so the CM clouds are in the right position.

I have to wonder if these were not Vipers in CM mode or Viper tech retrofitted to CMs.

Clouds of prelaunched Vipers would really be effective against LAC swarms. such a tech/tactic could have been part of anti-LAC tactics allowing a chance for small ships to survive against an overwhelming # of LACs.

Theemile wrote:The stuff we have now isn't intended to survive in an active warzone, we live in the longest era of naval peace in modern history. To do the best comparison, we would probably need to look at the defenses on WWII supply ships vs active warships of the era. Not that I know what those are.

The 1939 Cimarron-class fast oilers (for underway replenishment) were IIRC on the heavy end of defensive weapons fit during WWII.

The early ones carried 4 5"/38 guns; later ones swapped 3 of those for smaller, faster firing 3"/50 more AA focused gun. (Though only 2 of the guns appear to be in turrets - the rest appear to be exposed and manually operated)
Then all of them carried
8 (4 × twin mounts) 40 mm guns
8 (4 × twin mounts) 20 mm guns

Though the slightly later designed ammo ship USS Shasta (AE-6) carried a self-defense fit not significantly worse than the updated Cimarrons;
The same 1 5"/38 + 4 3"/50 guns (though none appear to be in turrets), but the light AA was biased towards the cheaper, lighter, 20mm guns
4 (2 x twin mount) 40 mm guns
16 (8 x twin mount) 20 mm guns

The ubiquitous Fletcher-class DD carried
5 5"/38 guns (in powered director controlled turrets)
6-10 40 mm guns
7–12 20 mm guns
10 × 21 inch torpedo tubes
6 × K-gun depth charge projectors
2 × depth charge racks

So aside from the torpedo and depth charges the 7,470 ton oiler looks on first glance to compare favorably to the weapons fit of the 2,050 ton destroyer.
The difference though is the support ships didn't have radar, director control, and (analog) fire control computers for its guns; nor are most of them installed in powered turrets; making them slower to load and aim. So even with the same gun tubes they'd be far less effective with them than the warship would be. (Also I don't think the bigger guns could be fed ammo as quickly as on the dedicated warship; which would also reduce defensive firepower in a way the top trump numbers don't really show)

The more common Liberty and Victory ship freighters carried a manually operated 5" gun on the stern and a manually operated 3" gun on the bow; operated by gun crews separate from the normal merchant crew.


But as weapons fits became more expensive (and complicated, and maintenance prone) it made less and less sense to install them on support ships. It made more sense to just provide a real warship as escort when required.

SharkHunter wrote:At 25mm kilometers, HMS Phantom would have been able to put pretty much all of their missiles into space before the SLN massive salvo reached them.

A Nike class ship carries enough missiles for about 20 minutes of maximum rate fire from all tubes.

Although we don't know for certain since we've never seen numbers on a Sang-B's missile capacity, the three heavy cruisers at Hypatia must have fired themselves nearly dry. They got 19 double salvos off before the return fire arrived, for 38 rounds per tube. Sang-Cs only carry 26-27 rounds per tube and Nikes carry 100-ish.

Galactic Sapper wrote:A Nike class ship carries enough missiles for about 20 minutes of maximum rate fire from all tubes.

Although we don't know for certain since we've never seen numbers on a Sang-B's missile capacity, the three heavy cruisers at Hypatia must have fired themselves nearly dry. They got 19 double salvos off before the return fire arrived, for 38 rounds per tube. Sang-Cs only carry 26-27 rounds per tube and Nikes carry 100-ish.

Kotouč would have planned for firing themselves practically dry before any return fire had a chance of arriving. All he had to do was calculate their velocity when they crossed the 14 Gm mark, which is where the Sag-Bs could fire. That part is easy.

Of course, you can get the most missiles in space by not moving at all, relative to the planet, but that also means all the waves will hit at the same poor range. He'd want follow-up waves to be as close as possible without being too close. Then again, they didn't have to fly directly *at* Hypatia. A tangential course would allow them to close the range but limit how close they'd be at maximum approach.

The only variable in that calculation was how quickly the SLN would find them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:A Nike class ship carries enough missiles for about 20 minutes of maximum rate fire from all tubes.

Although we don't know for certain since we've never seen numbers on a Sang-B's missile capacity, the three heavy cruisers at Hypatia must have fired themselves nearly dry. They got 19 double salvos off before the return fire arrived, for 38 rounds per tube. Sang-Cs only carry 26-27 rounds per tube and Nikes carry 100-ish.

Kotouč would have planned for firing themselves practically dry before any return fire had a chance of arriving. All he had to do was calculate their velocity when they crossed the 14 Gm mark, which is where the Sag-Bs could fire. That part is easy.

Of course, you can get the most missiles in space by not moving at all, relative to the planet, but that also means all the waves will hit at the same poor range. He'd want follow-up waves to be as close as possible without being too close. Then again, they didn't have to fly directly *at* Hypatia. A tangential course would allow them to close the range but limit how close they'd be at maximum approach.

The only variable in that calculation was how quickly the SLN would find them.

The point here would be that in order for the Phantom to fire herself nearly dry she'd have to be out far enough that either her fire or the Solly return fire would take nearly 20 minutes to cover the distance (probably the Sollies since she'd be firing only Mk 16s). Anything shorter and her launchers literally wouldn't be able to cycle fast enough to empty her magazines.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The point here would be that in order for the Phantom to fire herself nearly dry she'd have to be out far enough that either her fire or the Solly return fire would take nearly 20 minutes to cover the distance (probably the Sollies since she'd be firing only Mk 16s). Anything shorter and her launchers literally wouldn't be able to cycle fast enough to empty her magazines.

Indeed, but then we go back to to the question of whether it was better to start with a Sunday punch, including the Sag-B's Mk14s, or to deliver smaller Mk16 salvoes launched from further out. Clearly they concluded that a bigger salvo would be better, even if it meant that Phantom would not have fired all her missiles.

It was a Kobayashi Maru scenario (and no cheating allowed), so the task force had to do the best they could in the time they had, with the forces they had.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:The point here would be that in order for the Phantom to fire herself nearly dry she'd have to be out far enough that either her fire or the Solly return fire would take nearly 20 minutes to cover the distance (probably the Sollies since she'd be firing only Mk 16s). Anything shorter and her launchers literally wouldn't be able to cycle fast enough to empty her magazines.

Indeed, but then we go back to to the question of whether it was better to start with a Sunday punch, including the Sag-B's Mk14s, or to deliver smaller Mk16 salvoes launched from further out. Clearly they concluded that a bigger salvo would be better, even if it meant that Phantom would not have fired all her missiles.

It was a Kobayashi Maru scenario (and no cheating allowed), so the task force had to do the best they could in the time they had, with the forces they had.

The bigger salvos solution wins, hands down. It gets a higher percentage of the missiles through the Sollie point defense. Remember, the Sang-Bs are firing Mark 14 ERs that would take far more hits to kill a BC than the Mark 16 Mod Gs that Phantom is firing. In essence, the lighter missiles are decoys to absorb defensive fire for the heavy missiles. Even throwing triple salvos (the biggest Mark 16 armed ships are designed for) Phantom can only throw 150 at a time instead of the 350-360 that all four could throw in double salvos (which are only 20 seconds apart, rather than the 24 seconds they should be for Mark 16s but let's not quibble much).

Unfortunately, the Mark 14 ERs aren't fusion powered so they don't have the same power behind their ECM missiles - assuming they can power Dragon's Teeth at all is a stretch, and their jamming will be anemic compared to Dazzlers. All of which means some of the Mark 16s have to be ECM missiles instead of all ship killers which would have maximized the destructive potential of each salvo. Still, Sollie CMs aren't going to stop many missiles of any type and hiding the heavier Mark 16s in a larger number of Mark 14s means a greater percentage of those Mark 16s gets through the point defense lasers of the Sollies.

We can assume that point defense kill numbers aren't going to go down much against salvos half the size, so the same ~70 stopped from a 150 missile launch matters a lot more than from a 350 missile salvo, especially since about 70% of those are the lighter, more expendable warheads. And that's assuming the kill numbers don't go UP, due to the same number of PDLCs being directed at a smaller number of missiles. The conclusion is that Phantom by herself would be able to kill about 2 BCs per triple salvo, meaning she'd get through 60-65 BCs before she ran dry.

That would leave the three Sang-Bs facing 30+ BCs plus potential cripples from within their range, although those 30+ BCs would be limited to tube-launched missiles. We know the Markk 14s can kill BCs but we don't have any way to know how effective their lower energy budget pen aids would be against Sollie defenses or how many more hits they take to do so compared to the Mark 16 Mod G. It could well be that the Sang-Bs would be coming up dry before the Sollies ran out of ships, since even the cruisers and destroyers could have accomplished the mission without the BCs at all.

Even assuming Arngrim spoke up at some point and all five ships survived in reasonable condition, that would leave the task group facing a cruiser and destroyer flotilla armed with nothing more than Vipers and energy mounts. They could keep away from the Sollies but not prevent the orbital infrastructure from being destroyed, which was the whole point of the exercise.

Galactic Sapper wrote:They could keep away from the Sollies but not prevent the orbital infrastructure from being destroyed, which was the whole point of the exercise.

No, the whole point of the exercise was drawing a line and making it clear that saying that we'll support our allies isn't just words. The obvious SLN response to their popping out is to immediately blow up the infrastructure that was their mission, and then turn your attention to the attackers. Mission first...

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:They could keep away from the Sollies but not prevent the orbital infrastructure from being destroyed, which was the whole point of the exercise.

No, the whole point of the exercise was drawing a line and making it clear that saying that we'll support our allies isn't just words. The obvious SLN response to their popping out is to immediately blow up the infrastructure that was their mission, and then turn your attention to the attackers. Mission first...

If they'd done that, No one from TF1030 would be coming home. They'd have expended a considerable portion of the 120k missiles they had already deployed to attack the infrastructure and thereby committing an Eridani Edict Violation. That means TG110.2 would be attacked with less and would have a higher chance of survival (how much, not know, since 120k was way overkill) and Angrim would not have offered to let them leave. Petersen would have kept on firing to take out the BCs until they actually surrendered. Not to allow them to leave, but to surrender to the Hypatian authorities.

If Angrim was alone, Petersen might have had to hold back to defend herself against the escorts and whatever BCs were left. If one of the Sag-Bs or Phantom survived, they'd have decelerated and fired more.