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HMLAC 113

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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 10:46 am

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Theemile wrote:Let's not also forget when Honor was commanding LAC113 - which looks like somewhere in 1885 or so - The laser head was new, and had JUST been modified for CA/BC scale missiles a couple years previously. Chances are, these old LAC missiles are just boom/burn missiles - so gun based PD systems still had a snowball's chance in hades against such systems. Fleet 2000 was still some years off.

But on top of these old missiles, a LAC can't fire them as one salvo - each broadside has 2 6 missiles boxes on it. So no fancy launches, 2 separate 12 missile salvos of missiles with weak starting velocities (because no grav launchers.) So those missiles have a lower velocity, and have to get further in the defensive basket (in relatively small #s), so they have a much higher intercept ratio - even with the SD's older systems. This is actually the scenario the SD was designed for.
Good point -- I'd overlooked the timeline on laser-head development.

Honor was given command of HMLAC 113, according to the wiki (which says it got it from Jayne's), on May 31 1886; and had moved on to XO of a cruiser on Dec 10 1887.
In Fire Forged's armor essay says Manticore's first laser-head capable missile was their 1870 Mark-19 capital ship missile; in 1879 they started work on squeezing that down into their first CA/BC weight laser-head capable missile and by 1883 managed to release that in the form of the Mark 13 missile.

While we don't know for sure, I agree with you that, if the CA/BC missile was finally ready just 3 years or so before Honor was given HM LAC 113, BuOrd wouldn't yet have a laser-head ready for the far smaller LAC missiles.

In fact since they start retiring the class as obsolete in just a couple of years, in 1887 I'm not sure whether Highlander-class LACs ever got a laser-head for their missiles. (Yes, some were retained in training roles, assigned to Saganami Island until 1912; but the class in general doesn't appear to have been considered usable as warships by the time the series starts).


And SD armor designed to stand up to capital grade burn/boom warheads is going to do a superb job of shrugging off far, far, lighter LAC grade ones -- even if those missiles do get through the SD's point defenses. (Though that doesn't protect exposed surface mounts, like sensors, impeller rings, point defense weapons/emitters, etc.)



(Also, I'd missed that IFF said the Mark 13 was an 88,000 g missile; which means it was marginally quicker than the DD/CL weight, laser-head capable, missile Fearless had at Basilisk 18 years later; an 85,000 g design)
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 11:13 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
<snip>

(Also, I'd missed that IFF said the Mark 13 was an 88,000 g missile; which means it was marginally quicker than the DD/CL weight, laser-head capable, missile Fearless had at Basilisk 18 years later; an 85,000 g design)


One of the reasons the Fearless/Nobelese classes were being phased out was their launchers - the mk 50 missiles they fired were too small to field the Mk 34 laserhead/boom/burn missile, and had to use different warheads for each function. Hense all the action moving missiles mid-battle (well, that and destroyed magazines, missiles stuck in mags with destroyed launchers.)

A similiar LAC missile would have fixed loadouts in their box launchers, unable to change them on the fly - if laserheads were even developed for such old missiles.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by cthia   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 11:22 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
cthia wrote:Wedge down


Does a ship have enough power for defensive systems if the wedge is down? In all cases? Even though we know a tremendous amount of energy is needed to start the wedge? God forbid if the start is unsuccessful. After all, this is an emergency visit.

I don't suppose it is too far-fetched that the electronics and hardware wasn't always as reliable as those systems are now. Especially in the Sol System.

.

Yes, absolutely.
The wedge does provide a fair bit of its own power -- but unlike a Warshaski sail in a grav wave it does NOT produce surplus power that could be fed back into the ship's power systems.

Indeed. That has always been one of my gripes about wedges. They are the source of an enormous amount of power, but there is no surplus of energy to feed to other systems. We have discussed this before and I pointed out that capacitors have a tendency to discharge over time. And a wedge needs an enormous amount of energy to start. I always maintained that there should be some way to draw or shunt energy from other systems to kick-start a wedge in an emergency. And an unsuccessful start would have drawn down energy reserves even further. Not to mention what a specific emergency may have done to energy reserves in the form of bleed/leakage about the entire ship.

Now, being that it is an emergency, the MBS would provide a ship with jumping cables to donate plasma to start a wedge, but that would also mean that Honor could be privy to the state of an SD's inert energy weapons and defensive suite.

Jonathan_S wrote:Whether the wedge is up or down the ship can still have full power available to its defensive systems.

Can have. And probably would have, I agree. But as I stated, the perfect storm notwithstanding.


Jonathan_S wrote:Sure, without the wedge it won't have sidewalls. But its radars, ECM, jammers, CMs, and PDLC is just as operable without the wedge as with it.

And even a SLN's SD's CMs and PDLC would swat away 24 LAC missiles (which, remember, have lower terminal velocity and less room for ECM and penetration aids than even a destroyer's missile)

And the SD's passive armor would negate most of the effects of a LAC missile's puny warhead anyway.


About the best you could do, if it didn't even bother to defend itself, would be to hit it with a full load of contact nukes. Those would likely be able to mission kill it by destroying its surface mounted sensors and probably knocking out a bunch of its weapons hatches and emitters. But the hull armor would keep the interior safe. (And even if you hit the far less armored dorsal or ventral surfaces an SD has a full wrap around armor cylinder around its core vitals; so the nukes still wouldn't kill those).

If you use laser heads some might breach the outer armor, or manage to hit an unarmored area, but they're not going to punch through the intervening compartments and then the inner armor to reach anything critical. And many of them may end up just cratering the meters thick armor that's specifically designed to defeat energy fire and nukes.



Basically the only way I can see for a single LAC to outright kill an SD is for the SD to belly up to it, just a thousand km or so away and then drop its wedge to expose its ventral surface. At that range the LAC might be able to pull of a wedge strike before the SD could obliterate it -- and the LAC's wedge would be enough to kill the SD. (Though the stress of doing so might well blow out the LAC's impeller rooms)

If a LAC can only carry 24 missiles, would it bother to pack nukes?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 12:07 pm

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cthia wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:.
The wedge does provide a fair bit of its own power -- but unlike a Warshaski sail in a grav wave it does NOT produce surplus power that could be fed back into the ship's power systems.

Indeed. That has always been one of my gripes about wedges. They are the source of an enormous amount of power, but there is no surplus of energy to feed to other systems. We have discussed this before and I pointed out that capacitors have a tendency to discharge over time. And a wedge needs an enormous amount of energy to start. I always maintained that there should be some way to draw or shunt energy from other systems to kick-start a wedge in an emergency. And an unsuccessful start would have drawn down energy reserves even further. Not to mention what a specific emergency may have done to energy reserves in the form of bleed/leakage about the entire ship.
Why would you have a gripe that an engine isn't a net power producer? It's a massive anomaly that a sail can produce surplus power in addition to producing acceleration. (But you could kind of think of it as a sailing ship with a windmill so its sails can produce thrust without fuel, and because they can't push it as fast as the wing, the residual wind across deck can spin the windmill and produce some power for the ship.

It's already crazy enough that a wedge has some energy siphon, it seems greedy to wish it was also more than a 100% siphon so it could power itself and the ship.
"Darn, it's not good enough that I only have to burn fuel to provide a small fraction of the power needed to accelerate my ship." :lol: :lol:

So yeah, a wedge needs a steady input of power from the ship, normally it's reactors. And a larger surge to bring it up.
But you use the ship's reactor(s) to charge up the power you need to bring it up and then discharge to activate. You're not going to need a jumpstart because your capacitors discharged -- you'd just need to charge them back up from the reactor(s).
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by Brigade XO   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 12:38 pm

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HMLAC 113 against an SD?

Clearly we are all very desperately in need of a new SEM book.
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by cthia   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 2:03 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:HMLAC 113 against an SD?

Clearly we are all very desperately in need of a new SEM book.

Not exactly. That is Honor in a LAC, against an SD with wedge and sidewalls down, and since it is an emergency the SD may have other problems as well.

HMLAC 113 could have been Honor's first threat of a possible suicide run. She takes her duty seriously.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 2:32 pm

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cthia wrote:If a LAC can only carry 24 missiles, would it bother to pack nukes?


All Honorverse Anti-ship missiles have been nukes for centuries.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by cthia   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:34 pm

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Theemile wrote:
cthia wrote:If a LAC can only carry 24 missiles, would it bother to pack nukes?


All Honorverse Anti-ship missiles have been nukes for centuries.

Since the laser head, I was under the impression that the nuke was only a trigger; a bomb used to trigger the laser head. As in "bomb-pumped" laser. No?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by cthia   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:44 pm

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Question

It is a bad thing to take a missile in the open throat of a wedge. It always reminded me of the one sensitive spot or weakness of a ship, akin to the one-in-a-million shot Luke made against the Death Star in Star Wars.

Would this not be just as fatal a shot even if the wedge is down? I always thought that any shot taken up the wedge would be fatal for any ship because of its location, which I imagined starts all kinds of chain reactions, cascade effects, power surges ...


.
Last edited by cthia on Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: HMLAC 113
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:54 pm

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cthia wrote:Since the laser head, I was under the impression that the nuke was only a trigger; a bomb used to trigger the laser head. As in "bomb-pumped" laser. No?


It's still a 10 Mton nuke bomb in a Mk 13 CA missile to "pump" the laserheads, with contact Nuke and Grav focused Plasma Burn modes.

And older missile like the Mk 26 would only have the Contact nuke and focused Plasma Burn modes.

The are all grav pinched hydrogen Nuclear warheads. Contact is the old fashioned Boom. Focused Plasma uses Grav fields to focus the explosion plasma into a thin jet thousands of kilometers long too burn out sidewalls. Laserhead is the nuke with a handful of detachable lasing rod assemblies, each separates from the main body, and aligns it with the target, and when the nuke goes off, grav feild focus the plasma onto the rod assemblies, which absorb the plasma energy, then explode, releasing a good portion of the absorbed energy as a powerful laser pulse directed at the target.

The older missiles, without laserheads, had larger nuke warheads (more warhead volume - bigger bomb), while newer grav technology allow a smaller unit to produce a larger explosion and more focused plasma jets.

But at their core - they are all nuclear weapons.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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