A new Honorverse Ship Type ?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Here's an idea for RDs - smaller CMs. We know that you can get a wedge in a missile that can be shoulder launched, why not a build a pack of ~1 ton CMs that burn out in 5-10 seconds or so - an RD could be inside the opfor missile flight path (at a point when the opfor missiles are not maneuvering) and launch these with a spread, and delayed burn. The CMs fire up to spread out and hit the missiles. A handful of RDs, each with a dozen or so small CMs each can rip up launches early in a flight.

Would a small CM have a powerful enough impellers to cause wedge fratricide with anti-ship missiles?

If the power gap is too large the more powerful wedge simple shrugs off the impact and while the weaker one is totally vaporized.

I tend to suspect that shrinking a CM by that much would leave it unable to stop an anti-ship missile.

That would be the question - it needs to have a missile sized wedge or bigger, but you don't need the run time. I Said 1 Ton, but that was just a stab. The essence of the idea is to shrink the CM as small as you can and still get the necessary wedge power for a short amount of time. We know you can overdrive a (normally) smaller wedge for a short amount of time before the nodes burn out - (and the capacitors would be smaller because you don't need to store as much power) So the question is how small could you make a viable short range CM that burns out is 5-10 seconds = only David would know.

Theemile wrote:That would be the question - it needs to have a missile sized wedge or bigger, but you don't need the run time. I Said 1 Ton, but that was just a stab. The essence of the idea is to shrink the CM as small as you can and still get the necessary wedge power for a short amount of time. We know you can overdrive a (normally) smaller wedge for a short amount of time before the nodes burn out - (and the capacitors would be smaller because you don't need to store as much power) So the question is how small could you make a viable short range CM that burns out is 5-10 seconds = only David would know.

And can you get enough of them to make a difference?

The bottleneck might be the RD in the first place. Since you can't pre-place pods for a mobile force that doesn't know where it's going to be and where the threat is coming from, there needs to be something stealthy enough to move those pods into position. Without their own defence, they would be easy prey for a missile vanguard.

However, the unmanned LAC that Bolthole seem to be researching might be exactly this: a platform that carries loads of CMs and can be moved by their motherships.

BTW, 10 seconds at CM acceleration is less than 75000 km and 5 seconds is less than a quarter of that. I don't think those times are sufficient to intercept this far out from the missiles' targets.