Do we actually need SD(P)s?

Jonathan_S wrote:The Cataphract has been described as a 2 stage (rather than a 2 drive) missile. That hints that the first stage is dropped at some point - and for what it's worth every missile design we've seen puts the drive nodes at the rear; so, as GalacticSapper said it's not clear if a missile drive can even work when it's stuck 60+% of the way up the missile body. So you might need to drop spend stages when the impeller rings have wide physical separation.

If the first stage is dropped after burning out the original drive nodes (and exhausting it's capacitors) then the sensors and warhead would need to be on the 2nd stage. If so, sticking it in front of the 1st stage lets the sensors try to look at the target the whole way; rather than staring at the south end of a northbound missile for 70% of the flight. Plus it seems easier to drop the first stage if you can accelerate away from it -- instead of having to drop it in front of you and use thrusters or something to get far enough clear than you don't run back into it when the 2nd stage's CM drive activates.

Still, my inferences could be wildly off base. sut that's how I imagined it from the limited descriptions. A CM derived detachable upper stage, with smaller warhead and quite possibly smaller diameter, grafted onto the top of a conventional missile body that's just had it's warhead and sensors removed.

So I guess there are 3 thoughts.
1)a CM attached to the back of a missile
2) a CM drive segment between the drive segment and payload segment
3) a CM attached to the front of the missile

the text is something like "a CM attached to the end of the missile" if memory is correct, which makes #1 and 3 sound right. the gravity interaction between the nodes makes #3 sound most plausable, while the details of how we know sensors and laser heads operate makes #2 sound correct.

OH David, where are You????

--quick note unrelated to my Hypatia battle premise... while enjoying all the feedback and numbers I hadn't quite got my head around.

munroburton wrote: Quoting canon...

Above all other design elements, the addition of the Mark 20 Keyhole platform to the Nike-class allows it a greater level of tactical flexibility than any other warship currently in service. This costs a tremendous amount of mass and creates interesting problems (which some commentators describe as weaknesses) in the armor system. But those costs buy the ability to tether the platforms outside the wedge, which, coupled with the off-bore missile launchers, makes Nike the one of the first warships that can fight an entire engagement with her wedge to the enemy. The telemetry repeaters allow full control of both missiles and countermissiles, and the platforms’ onboard point defenses thicken defensive fire. In addition, the Keyhole platform can act as a “handoff” relay, allowing a Nike to coordinate offensive and defensive missile control for another ship while both keep their wedges to the threat. This flexibility has resulted in vastly increased computational complexity in offensive and defensive engagement programming and helps to explain much of the class’ survivability.

That being the case, I'm trying to figure out how the C's were coordinating so many Mk23-Es at Spindle, and Lessem's heavy cruisers are doing against the SLN in UH. Tell me if I've got it right:

1) At Spindle, was the only fire co-ordination between the 12 Cs was the order to fire(?) Plus a Q.... how are they using all 128 links (ship orientation) relative to Crandall's fleet? 2) Lessem's ships are doing the twist thing to get info only on the incoming fire for the CMs (?)

which is where I got -- the handoff question...

Somehow ships in formation are able to network enough to distribute control to manage counter-missile fire, all the way back to Fearless CA-286 in HotQ. That seems to negate the House of Steel quote above in terms of all the fire at Blackbird being under "Fearless finely meshed control". Yes/no? I am definitely not comprehending the difference unless the prior earlier control was only "by CM interception zone."

That's why I picture handoffs being possible though not easy until the DDM MDM era. With that much bandwidth and curvilinear missile tracks, a merged salvo in terms of control has always seemed possible given the FTL comm. Something like "handing off the control frequencies and unlock codes once formation A's missiles curve into formation B's "salvo circle of influence".

I'd certainly want that capability for all post-PD1922 G/A ships. Something like Forraker's Moriarty but as defensible and fully mobile "forward missile controllers". Aye / Nay?

Jonathan_S wrote:Still, my inferences could be wildly off base. sut that's how I imagined it from the limited descriptions. A CM derived detachable upper stage, with smaller warhead and quite possibly smaller diameter, grafted onto the top of a conventional missile body that's just had it's warhead and sensors removed.

Based on the drawings of the RMN misisles, once you pull to warhead and sensors off you have lost something like 50% of the missile length. So the drive bands are going to be pretty close together.

You want to get effective separation? How about you strap a solid rocket engine on the front on the CM and it tosses the dead CM away. You need to move the CM like 5 meters to do this, it's not exactly a hard project.

SharkHunter wrote:That being the case, I'm trying to figure out how the C's were coordinating so many Mk23-Es at Spindle, and Lessem's heavy cruisers are doing against the SLN in UH. Tell me if I've got it right:

1) At Spindle, was the only fire co-ordination between the 12 Cs was the order to fire(?) Plus a Q.... how are they using all 128 links (ship orientation) relative to Crandall's fleet? 2) Lessem's ships are doing the twist thing to get info only on the incoming fire for the CMs (?)

which is where I got -- the handoff question...

SSomehow ships in formation are able to network enough to distribute control to manage countermissile fire, all the way back to Fearless CA-286 in HotQ. That seems to negate the House of Steel quote above in terms of all the fire at Blackbird being under "Fearless finely meshed control". Yes/no? I am definitely not comprehending the difference unless the prior earlier control was only "by CM interception zone."

That's why I picture handoffs being possible though not easy until the DDM MDM era. With that much bandwidth and curvilinear missile tracks, a merged salvo in terms of control has always seemed possible given the FTL comm. Something like "handing off the control frequencies and unlock codes once formation A's missiles curve into formation B's "salvo circle of influence".

I'd certainly want that capability for all post-PD1922 G/A ships. Something like Forraker's Moriarty but as defensible and fully mobile "forward missile controllers". Aye / Nay?

In David's discussion of Keyhole, they are designed to pass off control of a Squadron's POD BASED missiles from one keyhole to another, so as to form a redundant firecontrol system in a 8 ship squadron (his example used ships A-H), and to confuse enemy sensors from seeing who was controlling the salvo. The system was supposed to be agile enough that if a keyhole was lost, another would pickup the slack seemlessly, and they could dart into and out of wedge shadows to protect themselves, passing off control to another ship.

However this discussion never discussed integration of non-keyhole based ships, though their integration is a logical next step for the technology, allowing what was discussed earlier by posters as the "Spear Carrier" concept - where non-upgraded ships increased the missile salvo for Keyhole ships to control. - this was specifically intended for Apollo pods launched or carried by older ships, but in situations like this, would allow thicker missile swarms from 1st and 2nd gen offbore ships.

AS for Spindle, each Sag-C has 128 missile links, allowing for a double, double broadside and 40% battle damage redundancy. The pods they were firing were Apollo pods with 8 shipkillers, with the Apollo Control Missile in relativistic control mode. so Each of the 12 Sag-Cs could control 128, 8 missile pods, or 12*8*128 - or 12,288 mk-23D missiles/salvo.

AS for countermissiles, I don't remember ever seeing them controlled by other platforms - coordinated - yes, but passing off control... no...

--snipping-- 2 things.

Theemile wrote:AS for Spindle, each Sag-C has 128 missile links, allowing for a double, double broadside and 40% battle damage redundancy. The pods they were firing were Apollo pods with 8 shipkillers, with the Apollo Control Missile in relativistic control mode. so Each of the 12 Sag-Cs could control 128, 8 missile pods, or 12*8*128 - or 12,288 mk-23D missiles/salvo.

AS for countermissiles, I don't remember ever seeing them controlled by other platforms - coordinated - yes, but passing off control... no...

2nd item first: Got it straight in my head, finally. CA-286 HMS Fearless Communications in HotQ were "controlling the coordination", not the missiles. Something like "here ship B & C... Troubadour and Apollo, take over the counter-missile fire for this volley or volume of space", etc. conveyed by computer command.

OK... the Sag C question more specifically:

I'd assume the 128 control channels are mostly based on a broadside orientation... which would dramatically cut the channels available if the ship were in a bow-forward position.
Otherwise (broadside) they'd only have half the control channels (64) available through the battle-facing sidewall unless the Sag C's wedge was. So by text-ev as written the implication would have to be that the -Css have something like 4x the -B's bow arrays available in a ship whose fore and aft hammerheads don't seem to have increased enough in size to accommodate. Yes/no?

Granted, if the 50% scenario were the case, it would be retconning the Battle of Spindle by a single paragraph or two to achieve the same outcome. Two half-the size salvos in short order = kaBoom then kaBang about what, 30 seconds later? to kill the same number of SLN superdreadnoughts.

Am I correct? (with a btw... Gonna have to give in and buy House of Steel, really soon... like next payday! It' the only book that affects PD1900 forward that I don't own.)

Theemile wrote:AS for Spindle, each Sag-C has 128 missile links, allowing for a double, double broadside and 40% battle damage redundancy. The pods they were firing were Apollo pods with 8 shipkillers, with the Apollo Control Missile in relativistic control mode. so Each of the 12 Sag-Cs could control 128, 8 missile pods, or 12*8*128 - or 12,288 mk-23D missiles/salvo.

Up to 120 in the chase aspects. "Additional control channels in the broadsides allow the class to handle large missile pod loads in addition to the shipboard launchers."

No hard numbers given for these, but I checked Shadow of Saganami. Hexapuma took on a pod load of 40 before going into Monica, so potentially 400.

They probably had enough channels to control both of the large salvos fired during Spindle(the 2nd one may be less memorable because it was detonated as a demonstration), even though they don't need full control during the approach of second salvo.

After reading a lot of that I have a headache and a question.
If you put a CM at the back of your missle to get a 2-stage or DD missile, how does the CM drive get your shipkiller missle up to speed? I would envision a shorter, smaller missle body for the initial burn and then dropping off after which- and with a ballistic phase as required withing the limits of holding the power in the business end- the "front" end of the device turns on it's powere and heads for the target. So you have quite probaly a "smaller" and less powered initial powered stage pushing a heavier delivery stage. Seems to me that you loose speed pushing the heavier delivery stage. How much differnce that will make in getting to where you think the target is I don't know but it has to effect the ultimate powered flight speed at engagement since your base velocity post separation/ 1st engine/1st impeller ring is going to be way lower than what you would have imparted to someting grafted onto a full-up shipkiller.

There have got to be some cubic cm minimums and geometry in how long the "CM stage" has to be even if you put it into a stage tube the same diameter of the shipkiller. That is so you can feed it through your launching equipment. Unless you are thinking that you are going to get some sort of effect of launching a larger missle with a smaller (physically) initial stage that can give it a higher rate of acceleration.

It works the same way as the regular missile drive does. The limiting factor in how much acceleration you can get for a ship isn't how much acceleration the drive can deliver, The drive can deliver a virtually infinite amount of of acceleration, it's how much acceleration are you exposing the occupants to.

So your limiting factor is the compensator. Trufully I don't understand why there is this mysterious missile compensator at all. Anti-tank rounds have over 100,000 g acceleration, so it is not impossible to just design the missile to just handle it directly. But whatever, that is the limiting factor.

Brigade XO wrote:After reading a lot of that I have a headache and a question.
If you put a CM at the back of your missle to get a 2-stage or DD missile, how does the CM drive get your shipkiller missle up to speed? I would envision a shorter, smaller missle body for the initial burn and then dropping off after which- and with a ballistic phase as required withing the limits of holding the power in the business end- the "front" end of the device turns on it's powere and heads for the target. So you have quite probaly a "smaller" and less powered initial powered stage pushing a heavier delivery stage. Seems to me that you loose speed pushing the heavier delivery stage. How much differnce that will make in getting to where you think the target is I don't know but it has to effect the ultimate powered flight speed at engagement since your base velocity post separation/ 1st engine/1st impeller ring is going to be way lower than what you would have imparted to someting grafted onto a full-up shipkiller.

There have got to be some cubic cm minimums and geometry in how long the "CM stage" has to be even if you put it into a stage tube the same diameter of the shipkiller. That is so you can feed it through your launching equipment. Unless you are thinking that you are going to get some sort of effect of launching a larger missle with a smaller (physically) initial stage that can give it a higher rate of acceleration.

Let's try to cut down on the confusion. Here is the quote about the missiles used in Oyseter Bay (the next generation after the ones used against Ruzsak) from Mission of Honor, chapter 29:

In the meantime, they'd come up with Cataphract, a variant of their own based on taking the standard missile bodies for the SLN's new-generation anti-ship missiles and adding what amounted to a separate final stage carrying a standard laser head and a counter-missile 's drive system. For Oyster Bay, they'd brought out the longest-ranged, heaviest version of their new weapon, fitted the birds into out-sized pods, then launched them behind other, specialized pods which carried nothing but low-powered particle screens and the power supplies to maintain them for the ballistic run in-system to their targets. The missile-laden pods had followed in the zone swept by the shield-equipped platforms; now they completed their own system checks and began to launch.

A version of the new weapon had been used with lethal effectiveness against Luis Rozsak's ships at the Second Battle of Congo. Unfortunately, the full report on that wasn't available to the RMN. They knew something had improved the range of the missiles which had been provided to the "People's Navy in Exile," and they'd managed to deduce approximately how it had been done, but that was about it. And even if they'd had access to Rozsak's report, it wouldn't have fully prepared them for this. Rozsak had faced the Cataphract-A, based on the SLN's new cruiser/destroyer Spatha shipkiller; the pod-launched missiles of Oyster Bay were Cataphract-Cs, based on the capital-ship Trebucht, with much heavier and more powerful laserheads. The combined package had a powered range from rest of over sixteen million kilometers and a terminal velocity of better than .49 c. That attack envelope would have made it formidable enough by itself, but installing the high-speed drive as the last stage also gave it far more agility when it came to penetrating the target's defenses during its terminal maneuvers.

So this missile is a standard anti-ship missiles with an added drive from a CM that kicks in last.

Could the CM drive be in the front, outside of the sensor package? That would still put it the correct distance from an end, while giving it maximum separation from the initial drives.

SharkHunter wrote:That being the case, I'm trying to figure out how the C's were coordinating so many Mk23-Es at Spindle, and Lessem's heavy cruisers are doing against the SLN in UH. Tell me if I've got it right:

1) At Spindle, was the only fire co-ordination between the 12 Cs was the order to fire(?) Plus a Q.... how are they using all 128 links (ship orientation) relative to Crandall's fleet? 2) Lessem's ships are doing the twist thing to get info only on the incoming fire for the CMs (?)

which is where I got -- the handoff question...

Somehow ships in formation are able to network enough to distribute control to manage counter-missile fire, all the way back to Fearless CA-286 in HotQ. That seems to negate the House of Steel quote above in terms of all the fire at Blackbird being under "Fearless finely meshed control". Yes/no? I am definitely not comprehending the difference unless the prior earlier control was only "by CM interception zone."

That's why I picture handoffs being possible though not easy until the DDM MDM era. With that much bandwidth and curvilinear missile tracks, a merged salvo in terms of control has always seemed possible given the FTL comm. Something like "handing off the control frequencies and unlock codes once formation A's missiles curve into formation B's "salvo circle of influence".

I'd certainly want that capability for all post-PD1922 G/A ships. Something like Forraker's Moriarty but as defensible and fully mobile "forward missile controllers". Aye / Nay?

Commodore Lessem didn't have any keyholes.

I think missile handoffs have been easy for centuries in the Honorverse. Just not when all ships have rolled their wedges and are blinded. The keyholes removes that blindness and allows ships to shoot around their own wedges.

The Nike's keyhole doesn't even have the FTL that SD(P)s' do. Something like it could have been invented and integrated into old-style SDs or even BBs, allowing them to do the same thing decades earlier.

Why didn't anyone do that? I suppose it might be because missiles were regarded as secondary, non-decisive armament on those ships... but mainly because they could use their screen to do this. From HotQ, we know DDs can spin very quickly compared with BCs, never mind SDs.

It's not written anywhere, but my speculation is that the RMN finally gave up on trying to supply battle squadrons with "proper" screens since they have a perpetual shortage of lighter ships. With keyholes(& CLACs), they no longer need to keep a few cruiser and destroyer squadrons tied to every major detached force.