Attacking Darius:

Never mind, I answered the wrong question; but see the interesting picture here:
Wedge Geometry

cthia wrote:I totally forgot that with barricade the missiles were ballistic. But that may not be my only problem.

Where exactly is the wedge of a missile located? I am under the impression that the wedge is formed at the rear of the missile.

Like a ship's: above and below, inclined, with the larger opening facing the direction of acceleration. That means the barricade missiles must have pivoted upwards or downwards (pitched) so as to present the full wedge towards the oncoming salvo.

You must be confusing the wedge with the impeller ring that produces the wedge. Yes, the impeller ring(s) are at the back of the missile.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I totally forgot that with barricade the missiles were ballistic. But that may not be my only problem.

Where exactly is the wedge of a missile located? I am under the impression that the wedge is formed at the rear of the missile.

Like a ship's: above and below, inclined, with the larger opening facing the direction of acceleration. That means the barricade missiles must have pivoted upwards or downwards (pitched) so as to present the full wedge towards the oncoming salvo.

You must be confusing the wedge with the impeller ring that produces the wedge. Yes, the impeller ring(s) are at the back of the missile.

Missile wedges are 2 planes sized between 10x10 km and 15x15 km and separated by a km or so - the missile is located roughly in the center between the 2 planes. The missile is 5+ km from any edges the wedges.

So imagine 2 letter sized of paper separated by ~1/2 inch (but the front is separated slightly wider than the rear), the missile itself (being smaller than a period of the text written on either of the pages) is situated in roughly the center of the pages in all dimensions.

Jonathan_S wrote:
But even so I don't remember offhand quite how large a missile's impeller wedge is (though SoV says a Mk23's is bigger than normal, but not as big as a CMs) but I want to say its at least a couple km wide (might be more; but let's use 2). So a single CM is sweeping probably sweeping at least 1.2 square km (since the wedge angle should give you at least 600 meters of height) at a time; and only needs to pass within a few km of its target to get the wedge fratricide kill. So even with just a 2 km wide wedge it effectively covers 3-4000 times more area than even a large energy beam does.

Ship killers and CMs have wedges 10-15km square.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
But even so I don't remember offhand quite how large a missile's impeller wedge is (though SoV says a Mk23's is bigger than normal, but not as big as a CMs) but I want to say its at least a couple km wide (might be more; but let's use 2). So a single CM is sweeping probably sweeping at least 1.2 square km (since the wedge angle should give you at least 600 meters of height) at a time; and only needs to pass within a few km of its target to get the wedge fratricide kill. So even with just a 2 km wide wedge it effectively covers 3-4000 times more area than even a large energy beam does.

Ship killers and CMs have wedges 10-15km square.

Thanks

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I totally forgot that with barricade the missiles were ballistic. But that may not be my only problem.

Where exactly is the wedge of a missile located? I am under the impression that the wedge is formed at the rear of the missile.

Like a ship's: above and below, inclined, with the larger opening facing the direction of acceleration. That means the barricade missiles must have pivoted upwards or downwards (pitched) so as to present the full wedge towards the oncoming salvo.

You must be confusing the wedge with the impeller ring that produces the wedge. Yes, the impeller ring(s) are at the back of the missile.

Theemile wrote:Missile wedges are 2 planes sized between 10x10 km and 15x15 km and separated by a km or so - the missile is located roughly in the center between the 2 planes. The missile is 5+ km from any edges the wedges.

So imagine 2 letter sized of paper separated by ~1/2 inch (but the front is separated slightly wider than the rear), the missile itself (being smaller than a period of the text written on either of the pages) is situated in roughly the center of the pages in all dimensions.

No ThinksMarkedly, I was not confusing the wedge with the impeller ring. I won't allow you to extricate me out of the dunce class so easily. But thanks anyway.

I always thought that the wedge pretty much protected fore and aft of the ships. And the sides are protected by sidewalls. With a bit of overlap, I assumed. And, I thought, since the wedge is so large that it extended a fair bit off into space fore and aft of the ship.

Theemile's description was best to date AFAIC. Until I saw the link tlb posted. Thanks, both of you, BTW.

But, damn, these are real bug zappers. I am still going to give barricade a failing grade. But an F is better than an Incomplete.

An LD Running Silent

Exactly what tactics might allow an LD to sneak up on a skunk and steal his stink?



— A newly developed material on the hull which bends light. This should allow for very close approaches.

— The most vulnerable blind spot? Approaching from the rear of enemy vessels where radar or human attention might not be focused. The vector of least likely threat.

— Nano coating on the hull used to deter radar.

— Possible reorientation of LD towards the prey.

— A Stealthy Shape which minimizes detection by minimizing cross sections, that reflect radar returns away from source.

— Very slowly.

cthia wrote:

An LD Running Silent

Exactly what tactics might allow an LD to sneak up on a skunk and steal his stink?



— A newly developed material on the hull which bends light. This should allow for very close approaches.

— The most vulnerable blind spot? Approaching from the rear of enemy vessels where radar or human attention might not be focused. The vector of least likely threat.

— Nano coating on the hull used to deter radar.

— Possible reorientation of LD towards the prey.

— A Stealthy Shape which minimizes detection by minimizing cross sections, that reflect radar returns away from source.

— Very slowly.

I'll note that the rear of Honorverse ships has quite a lot of radar focused from it. They do spend quite a lot of their time flying "backwards" -- with their aft hammerhead pointed into the direction of travel. As such it has just as much radar and sensors, devoted to watching where it's going and for any approaching threat, as the forward hammerhead does.

(That's what happens when you've got ships with effectively no drag/friction to slow them down and effectively only able to accelerate towards their bow. To come to a stop you point forwards for the first half of the trip -- accelerating to maximum speed -- then flip over and send the second half of the trip flying tail first as you apply acceleration towards your bow to scrub off all the speed you just built up)

So doesn't matter which ways its flying, or if you consider the rear with respect to the ship hull, or the direction of travel, the same quality of sensors are pointed each way.



The actual blind, or at least myopic, spots are from directly above or directly below, where the ship's wedge distorts and clouds its own sensors. It can see through its wedge, thanks to knowing more about the wedge's current state than any outside observer could; but even so the sensor view is still degraded.
However I don't know if a warship would normally maintain a constant level, or if it might periodically do a slow roll to sweep its broadside sensors around through those normally wedge obscured areas.

Jonathan_S wrote:The actual blind, or at least myopic, spots are from directly above or directly below, where the ship's wedge distorts and clouds its own sensors. It can see through its wedge, thanks to knowing more about the wedge's current state than any outside observer could; but even so the sensor view is still degraded.
However I don't know if a warship would normally maintain a constant level, or if it might periodically do a slow roll to sweep its broadside sensors around through those normally wedge obscured areas.

In fleet formation, it may not have to. There's no reason every ship's wedge orientation is parallel to every other ship. They could and should be flying with their wedges in multiple different angles around the same velocity vector they all share. This would allow the full fleet to have full, unimpeded scan of 360° around itself, by combining the scanning power of the individual units in that fleet.

Plus, they have Keyholes and Ghost Riders. So even a single Nike flying solo (because no SD would be solo) would have this ability, at least when alert to battle conditions.

So I don't think there's any direction that a ship in the HV is inherently blind at. There may be directions where detection is more difficult for other reasons, like for example directly facing the star. At least for the majority of the approach, the blind spot the ship makes on the star is incredibly minute and may not be detectable. But this changes quickly before it's sufficiently close for an attack run.

Another possibility is a classical sci-fi technique: approach from behind a planet or asteroid. For planets, that requires a particularly reckless CO on the other side, for having approached it without deploying close-range scans of the remote side. Asteroids are a different story, since there can be a lot of them. And while a belt isn't as closely packed as we see on TV and movies, an average distance of a million km between bodies means there'll likely be a handful of them in proximity of a fleet that travelled through a belt. But that still requires a CO that followed the least-time course to an expected target and also gave the other side time to emplace those weapons (as discussed before, Kepler's Third Law applies).

As discussed before, maybe as much as a year ago, the best strategy for an LD or gtorp is to move into the path the opponent is taking to a destination, at an angle. At 150 gravities, they can change their position by about 10 million km in one hour. So if you pre-emplace them at a radius of 16 light-minutes around the primary, half the arc is only 452 million km in perimeter, so you need 45 emplacements separated by 10 million km. So if the enemy obliges and comes on the ecliptic, you have a good chance at interception with massive firepower.

In 3D, the problem changes. It seems that, like Khan, everyone in the Honorverse have 2D thinking. But surrounding your planet with a shell of weapon emplacements at a radius from your world half its orbital radius is perfectly doable.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
In fleet formation, it may not have to. There's no reason every ship's wedge orientation is parallel to every other ship. They could and should be flying with their wedges in multiple different angles around the same velocity vector they all share. This would allow the full fleet to have full, unimpeded scan of 360° around itself, by combining the scanning power of the individual units in that fleet.

Plus, they have Keyholes and Ghost Riders. So even a single Nike flying solo (because no SD would be solo) would have this ability, at least when alert to battle conditions.

So I don't think there's any direction that a ship in the HV is inherently blind at. There may be directions where detection is more difficult for other reasons, like for example directly facing the star. At least for the majority of the approach, the blind spot the ship makes on the star is incredibly minute and may not be detectable. But this changes quickly before it's sufficiently close for an attack run.

Another possibility is a classical sci-fi technique: approach from behind a planet or asteroid. For planets, that requires a particularly reckless CO on the other side, for having approached it without deploying close-range scans of the remote side. Asteroids are a different story, since there can be a lot of them. And while a belt isn't as closely packed as we see on TV and movies, an average distance of a million km between bodies means there'll likely be a handful of them in proximity of a fleet that travelled through a belt. But that still requires a CO that followed the least-time course to an expected target and also gave the other side time to emplace those weapons (as discussed before, Kepler's Third Law applies).

All good points.
I'm amused to realize that your "particularly reckless CO" was once Honor at Blackbird [HotQ]. She had some reasons, and the recon drones back then were far less capable. But she swept her combined RMN and GSN formation of cruisers around the moon Blackbird without punching RD ahead to see what was there. That let Theisman whip his destroyer Principality/PNS Breslau around ahead over her, overtake, and launch into her rear aspect.


Still, the more I think about it the less I understand why Honor came around blind. She'd already come out and beaten off the base's ground based missiles; so there was no secret she was there. The base defenses might have been able to pick off RDs -- but at that point I don't see a reason why you don't at least try to get a look before whipping around.

Imagine what a disaster it would have been if Yu had been back with Thunder of God/PNS Saladin and was part of the force formed up behind the moon.. All he'd have to do is wait, and avoid interrupting an enemy in the course of making a mistake, and when the cruisers swept around the backside of the moon they'd fly right into an energy range fight with a BC! At that range a BC would tear those RMN and GSN cruisers and LACs apart!!