Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

Jonathan_S wrote:By the time a Mk23E could see the grasrehead detonating (well it doesn't detonate, but does slag down after 3 seconds) the graser would already be hitting at least its first target -- as both the visual of the detonation and the graser would be traveling at the speed of light.

This is assuming that the warhead detonating is near instantaneous to the graser beam. I made an (unspoken) assumption that there are telltale signs that the missile is about to detonate its warhead and fire. The process is fast, but not instantaneous, so there's a delay between seeing the signs of detonation and the graser beam arriving. The question is how long that is, how quickly the Mk23E can determine to be a threat, how quickly its signal reaches the other missiles (since they cluster, I assume they're within 3000 km of each other, so within 10ms lightspeed command) and how quickly the missiles can pitch.

Given that they can target a ship that has pitched wedge, we know they can rotate really quickly, in the order of milliseconds (20 rotations per second means it can turn 45° in 6.25 ms and it wouldn't need 45° to protect itself). A 10 ms command delay implies the Mk23E is up to 10 light-milliseconds behind the other ones too, so that means the worst reaction time is 26.25 ms. Does a 300-ms graser take more than this to ramp up to firing power?

And that's only for the first, targeted missiles. The other clusters of Apollo would have more advance notice because the graser beam isn't directed at them. They'd have the additional time of the beam swinging towards them. Admittedly, this will be shorter than the reactor ramping up to full power, but every millisecond counts.

If the Mk23E carries forward looking grav sensors it might well see the graserhead starting to spin in preperation of this 'deathblosson' -- that'd give it warning time to order its brood to take defensive action -- but otherwise I don't think it'd see anything until the graser hit something. (But I still agree this is pretty much, at best, a "use one" tactic. If absolutely nothing else it can be countered by preemptively spreading salvos out more so no more than one missile is within graser range of each other during their ballistic phase - over a 65+ million km flight even very small divergence in heading will add up to a ton of lateral seperation by the time the 2nd drive goes down)

Or just applying plain evasive manoeuvres. Constantly pitch up and down and constantly roll too. The missiles have acceleration to spare.

You're talking about targeting them during the ballistic phase. Indeed, that would be a tactic the MAN would want to have, because they won't have Apollo-quality missiles for a while. That means that even with a true 3-stage MDM, their accuracy is going to suck at 50+ million km, while the GA would fire from well over 80 million to stay outside of any powered range. Somehow negating that advantage would be foremost on their minds.

During the ballistic phase, a missile spinning and firing a curtain of graser as a disc makes sense... except that it's still highly unlikely to hit anything. A missile is 10 m in length and if the graser beam had a 2 m aperture (which is highly unlikely for a missile beam), a missile enters and departs the disc in 75 nanoseconds. If the graserhead-spinning-CM wanted to complete a rotation in 75 ns, its angular velocity is 84.8 million rad/s and the linear velocity of a 30-metre missile - assuming it rotates around its centre point - would be 1.27 million km/s... or 4.2c.

That's physically impossible. If we reduce the rotation to something a wedge could produce, you have the problem of there's a wedge pitched up right in front of you and the missiles are not going to mistake that. If there's one thing Apollo missiles are programmed for besides their primary mission is evading a wedge that isn't their target. And you can bet that Harkness' barricade stunt was programmed into the ACM. Besides, if you had the wedge right there, why not do the barricade?

If you remove the wedge, then you have to rotate using either the spider or rocket Physics, both of which should reduce the rotation rate so much that nearly all of missiles would pass through the disc while the CM isn't pointing at them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You're talking about targeting them during the ballistic phase. Indeed, that would be a tactic the MAN would want to have, because they won't have Apollo-quality missiles for a while. That means that even with a true 3-stage MDM, their accuracy is going to suck at 50+ million km, while the GA would fire from well over 80 million to stay outside of any powered range. Somehow negating that advantage would be foremost on their minds.

During the ballistic phase, a missile spinning and firing a curtain of graser as a disc makes sense... except that it's still highly unlikely to hit anything. A missile is 10 m in length and if the graser beam had a 2 m aperture (which is highly unlikely for a missile beam), a missile enters and departs the disc in 75 nanoseconds. If the graserhead-spinning-CM wanted to complete a rotation in 75 ns, its angular velocity is 84.8 million rad/s and the linear velocity of a 30-metre missile - assuming it rotates around its centre point - would be 1.27 million km/s... or 4.2c.

That's physically impossible. If we reduce the rotation to something a wedge could produce, you have the problem of there's a wedge pitched up right in front of you and the missiles are not going to mistake that. If there's one thing Apollo missiles are programmed for besides their primary mission is evading a wedge that isn't their target. And you can bet that Harkness' barricade stunt was programmed into the ACM. Besides, if you had the wedge right there, why not do the barricade?

Well I'm only talking about it because I was addressing that part of penny's proposal.

I'd come to slightly different numbers in my older post (slightly different starting assumptions), but also found that to get the coverage he wants would require a rotational tip speed well in excess of the speed of light.

(It also occurs that it's be a crazy looking spiral of graser, if you could somehow see it -- if you could whip the graser in a circle in 75 ns, which you can't, by the time you're back where you started the photons from your previous rotation have already moved 22.4m, so with a 2m wide beam the "disc" is about 90% graser-free)


Barricade seems unlikely to work well on RMN missiles. After they'd though it up I have to assume their default missile route programming would have been updated to ensure missiles on ballistic maintain separation greater than a couple wedge widths; so pitching up and running your wedge through a salvo should be unlikely to hit more than one missile. Whereas even if fired in a straight line a graser that's lethal over a 50,000x2 meter area has a killing zone that's got to be at least 20,000 times larger than the few square km a missile wedge might encompass. (If only you could get the enemy to cooperate by lining up all their missiles to perfectly fly through that area during the seconds your graser is operable )
So I can see why this concept initially seems attractive - before checking and discovering the physics don't work.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:You're talking about targeting them during the ballistic phase. Indeed, that would be a tactic the MAN would want to have, because they won't have Apollo-quality missiles for a while. That means that even with a true 3-stage MDM, their accuracy is going to suck at 50+ million km, while the GA would fire from well over 80 million to stay outside of any powered range. Somehow negating that advantage would be foremost on their minds.

During the ballistic phase, a missile spinning and firing a curtain of graser as a disc makes sense... except that it's still highly unlikely to hit anything. A missile is 10 m in length and if the graser beam had a 2 m aperture (which is highly unlikely for a missile beam), a missile enters and departs the disc in 75 nanoseconds. If the graserhead-spinning-CM wanted to complete a rotation in 75 ns, its angular velocity is 84.8 million rad/s and the linear velocity of a 30-metre missile - assuming it rotates around its centre point - would be 1.27 million km/s... or 4.2c.

That's physically impossible. If we reduce the rotation to something a wedge could produce, you have the problem of there's a wedge pitched up right in front of you and the missiles are not going to mistake that. If there's one thing Apollo missiles are programmed for besides their primary mission is evading a wedge that isn't their target. And you can bet that Harkness' barricade stunt was programmed into the ACM. Besides, if you had the wedge right there, why not do the barricade?

Well I'm only talking about it because I was addressing that part of penny's proposal.

I'd come to slightly different numbers in my older post (slightly different starting assumptions), but also found that to get the coverage he wants would require a rotational tip speed well in excess of the speed of light.

(It also occurs that it's be a crazy looking spiral of graser, if you could somehow see it -- if you could whip the graser in a circle in 75 ns, which you can't, by the time you're back where you started the photons from your previous rotation have already moved 22.4m, so with a 2m wide beam the "disc" is about 90% graser-free)


Barricade seems unlikely to work well on RMN missiles. After they'd though it up I have to assume their default missile route programming would have been updated to ensure missiles on ballistic maintain separation greater than a couple wedge widths; so pitching up and running your wedge through a salvo should be unlikely to hit more than one missile. Whereas even if fired in a straight line a graser that's lethal over a 50,000x2 meter area has a killing zone that's got to be at least 20,000 times larger than the few square km a missile wedge might encompass. (If only you could get the enemy to cooperate by lining up all their missiles to perfectly fly through that area during the seconds your graser is operable )
So I can see why this concept initially seems attractive - before checking and discovering the physics don't work.

Going back to the death blossom idea, and ignoring the targeting issues, we could up the number of laser head beams on a Mk 25. If we replace the 10x 10m laserheads with 30x 3m laserheads from a Mk 34 dd/CL missile, we could get the missile to fire @ 30 targets in their ballistic phase. The capital ship rending capability of the 10m laserhead isn't required, the "love tap" of the DD/CL 3m laserhead will more than suffice.

But again, targeting the wedge down missile bodies' forward aspect moving @ .2c (from another missile moving at .2c) will be difficult.

Theemile wrote:Going back to the death blossom idea, and ignoring the targeting issues, we could up the number of laser head beams on a Mk 25. If we replace the 10x 10m laserheads with 30x 3m laserheads from a Mk 34 dd/CL missile, we could get the missile to fire @ 30 targets in their ballistic phase. The capital ship rending capability of the 10m laserhead isn't required, the "love tap" of the DD/CL 3m laserhead will more than suffice.

But again, targeting the wedge down missile bodies' forward aspect moving @ .2c (from another missile moving at .2c) will be difficult.

When would you have closing speeds that low in modern Honorverse combat?

If you're using it as a CM near you then the incoming missile's closing speed should be north of 0.6c. If you're using it closer to their missiles launch (when they might be 0.2c) then your closing speed should be north of 0.6c.

Interesting idea though. Not so much for anti-missile; but if LACs get more dangerous you might consider building some of these as anti-LAC heads for your normal missiles. Give you more hitting ability against LACs out beyond the range of the Viper.
(And this might even make sense as an 'escort missile' if LACs form a major part of your enemy's anti-missile defense. They'd still be hard to target at that range; but dumping 3x the lasing rods makes up for some uncertainty in targeting; and might tip the balance towards it being worth expending an MDM against LACs instead of against ships that can shoot back)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:Going back to the death blossom idea, and ignoring the targeting issues, we could up the number of laser head beams on a Mk 25. If we replace the 10x 10m laserheads with 30x 3m laserheads from a Mk 34 dd/CL missile, we could get the missile to fire @ 30 targets in their ballistic phase. The capital ship rending capability of the 10m laserhead isn't required, the "love tap" of the DD/CL 3m laserhead will more than suffice.

But again, targeting the wedge down missile bodies' forward aspect moving @ .2c (from another missile moving at .2c) will be difficult.

When would you have closing speeds that low in modern Honorverse combat?

If you're using it as a CM near you then the incoming missile's closing speed should be north of 0.6c. If you're using it closer to their missiles launch (when they might be 0.2c) then your closing speed should be north of 0.6c.

Interesting idea though. Not so much for anti-missile; but if LACs get more dangerous you might consider building some of these as anti-LAC heads for your normal missiles. Give you more hitting ability against LACs out beyond the range of the Viper.
(And this might even make sense as an 'escort missile' if LACs form a major part of your enemy's anti-missile defense. They'd still be hard to target at that range; but dumping 3x the lasing rods makes up for some uncertainty in targeting; and might tip the balance towards it being worth expending an MDM against LACs instead of against ships that can shoot back)

.2c (depending on the base ship speed) should be near the speed a single drive should be able to burn out prior to it's ballistic phase.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But again, targeting the wedge down missile bodies' forward aspect moving @ .2c (from another missile moving at .2c) will be difficult.

When would you have closing speeds that low in modern Honorverse combat?

.2c (depending on the base ship speed) should be near the speed a single drive should be able to burn out prior to it's ballistic phase.[/quote]From rest a single RMN drive (at its normal 1/2 power) would burn out at 0.27c
Based on the numbers we've been given by Duckk and the books Cataphracts are a bit faster.
Original one's first stage burns out at 0.28c (467 KPS^2 accel)
The ones used by 11th fleet's 1st stage burns out at 0.42c (701 KPS^2 accel)
The ones in (IIRC) UH, their 1st stage burns out at 0.50c (840 KPS^2 accel)

Of course if you're targeting down the wedge of the Cataphract then either their first stage is still running, which means you covered a lot more distance (and thus almost certainly burned out your first and second drive; so way over 0.2c), or their 2nd stage has lit off; which again means they'd be accelerating above the burnout speed of their first stage.

Thanks for the proposal Theemile. I can't do it alone. I sure do appreciate Honor's dilemma aboard Fearless like I never have before.

Theemile wrote:Going back to the death blossom idea, and ignoring the targeting issues,

I didn't think targeting would be an issue when likewise shooting a scattergun into a flock of geese. You aren't targeting a single goose, you are counting on the size of the flock and the impossibility of missing because of it.

Theemile wrote:we could up the number of laser head beams on a Mk 25. If we replace the 10x 10m laserheads with 30x 3m laserheads from a Mk 34 dd/CL missile, we could get the missile to fire @ 30 targets in their ballistic phase. The capital ship rending capability of the 10m laserhead isn't required, the "love tap" of the DD/CL 3m laserhead will more than suffice.

Thanks for the proposal! Likewise, I was thinking along the same lines that the output of a g-torp isn't required in this application. Dialing down the output and the duration of the detonation might possibly drastically shrink the size of the g-torp itself. We do not know everything that went on during the development of the g-torp. The MAN’s original research into the g-torp would have undoubtedly wanted it to remain as small as possible. Nobody wants huge missiles. We do not know whether or not at one point the g-torp’s size was comparable or even smaller than GA missiles, but that the goal of a higher output and longer firing time pushed the size of the missile up a lot higher. IOW, they may have gotten a 1-second firing graserhead with a much lower output initially, in a size comparable or smaller than a GA missile. Which GA missile? Beats me. But my point is, to apply the tech to a CM, both the output and duration of fire might drastically reduce the size of the CM. We do not need enormous output to destroy a missile. And as quickly as the engagement would be over, it seems to me that a 1-second firing low output g-head would suffice.

Again, I don't see targeting as being a problem. Missiles are coming at you with their mouths open. And GA missiles are packed closely together. Each brood of eight missiles in an Apollo launch are “tethered” to the control missile. They have to remain close to their mother like baby geese in a flock.

Theemile wrote:But again, targeting the wedge down missile bodies' forward aspect moving @ .2c (from another missile moving at .2c) will be difficult.

Again, I just don't see how firing into a salvo of thousands of missiles will present a targeting issue. CMs simply want to thin the herd. They aren't concerned with targeting specific missiles.

Textev always stressed how the huge salvos of each combatant's missiles interpenetrated each other. Missiles don't dodge other missiles except for the Triple Ripple. But I would think dodging CMs isn't as easy as dodging missiles. CMs intercept a salvo much closer than the exchanges in the Triple Ripple. We must keep in mind that it should be much more difficult to dodge CMs and remain on an optimum bearing to attack a formation. Missiles must keep their eye on the prize.

Plus, when dodging the Triple Ripple the RMN could see the oncoming missile storm far in advance than they would see a CM launch. And if the AI onboard GA missiles maneuver to avoid, then regular CMs would have a much better chance to hit the missile when presented with the much bigger profile of a missile storm that is pitching ... maneuvering away.

penny wrote:Again, I don't see targeting as being a problem. Missiles are coming at you with their mouths open. And GA missiles are packed closely together. Each brood of eight missiles in an Apollo launch are “tethered” to the control missile. They have to remain close to their mother like baby geese in a flock.

Close is relative. The very tightest anti-ship missiles can pack, to avoid wedge fratricide, is likely about 5 km separation; while each missile is only about 2m diameter. (And let's assume the 23E is in a trailing position behind all the attack missiles, so it can maintain tightbeam links to their aft antenna; and doesn't add to the frontage area)


So, assuming an Apollo cluster of 9 attack Mk23s was flying in that tightest formation, you'd be looking at about a 10x10 km box (100,000,000 m^2) coming at you, of which ~ 28.3 m^2 is missile (31.4 m^2 if we include the trailing 23E). So 99.99997% empty space!!

And again that's the tightest they can fly without destroying each other!

Not quite taking a shotgun to a flock of geese


In actuality, for most of the flight, the separations would likely be hundreds to thousands of km -- and then much more than that between one cluster of 9+1 Apollo missiles and the next.

penny wrote:Thanks for the proposal Theemile. I can't do it alone. I sure do appreciate Honor's dilemma aboard Fearless like I never have before.

Theemile wrote:Going back to the death blossom idea, and ignoring the targeting issues,

I didn't think targeting would be an issue when likewise shooting a scattergun into a flock of geese. You aren't targeting a single goose, you are counting on the size of the flock and the impossibility of missing because of it.

Theemile wrote:we could up the number of laser head beams on a Mk 25. If we replace the 10x 10m laserheads with 30x 3m laserheads from a Mk 34 dd/CL missile, we could get the missile to fire @ 30 targets in their ballistic phase. The capital ship rending capability of the 10m laserhead isn't required, the "love tap" of the DD/CL 3m laserhead will more than suffice.

Thanks for the proposal! Likewise, I was thinking along the same lines that the output of a g-torp isn't required in this application. Dialing down the output and the duration of the detonation might possibly drastically shrink the size of the g-torp itself. We do not know everything that went on during the development of the g-torp. The MAN’s original research into the g-torp would have undoubtedly wanted it to remain as small as possible. Nobody wants huge missiles. We do not know whether or not at one point the g-torp’s size was comparable or even smaller than GA missiles, but that the goal of a higher output and longer firing time pushed the size of the missile up a lot higher. IOW, they may have gotten a 1-second firing graserhead with a much lower output initially, in a size comparable or smaller than a GA missile. Which GA missile? Beats me. But my point is, to apply the tech to a CM, both the output and duration of fire might drastically reduce the size of the CM. We do not need enormous output to destroy a missile. And as quickly as the engagement would be over, it seems to me that a 1-second firing low output g-head would suffice.

Again, I don't see targeting as being a problem. Missiles are coming at you with their mouths open. And GA missiles are packed closely together. Each brood of eight missiles in an Apollo launch are “tethered” to the control missile. They have to remain close to their mother like baby geese in a flock.

Theemile wrote:But again, targeting the wedge down missile bodies' forward aspect moving @ .2c (from another missile moving at .2c) will be difficult.

Again, I just don't see how firing into a salvo of thousands of missiles will present a targeting issue. CMs simply want to thin the herd. They aren't concerned with targeting specific missiles.

Textev always stressed how the huge salvos of each combatant's missiles interpenetrated each other. Missiles don't dodge other missiles except for the Triple Ripple. But I would think dodging CMs isn't as easy as dodging missiles. CMs intercept a salvo much closer than the exchanges in the Triple Ripple. We must keep in mind that it should be much more difficult to dodge CMs and remain on an optimum bearing to attack a formation. Missiles must keep their eye on the prize.

Plus, when dodging the Triple Ripple the RMN could see the oncoming missile storm far in advance than they would see a CM launch. And if the AI onboard GA missiles maneuver to avoid, then regular CMs would have a much better chance to hit the missile when presented with the much bigger profile of a missile storm that is pitching ... maneuvering away.

Missiles are currently designed to be aimed at a single target, and all the laserheads onboard work in tandem to attack that one target. A Missile's forward sensors have been described as "Looking through a drinking straw," and that straw is focused on that one target. Their laserheads en mass are designed to bracket at a single 1-5 KM long oval target area.

At a minimum, we talking about updating the missile to track 10-30 separate targets over a 5000KM wide circle, and be able to target each one with meter accuracy. So the sensors, onboard calculation capacity and laserhead aiming methodology needs to change.

No one is saying undoable, but it's comparing apples and... Pumpkins.

Theemile wrote:
Missiles are currently designed to be aimed at a single target, and all the laserheads onboard work in tandem to attack that one target. A Missile's forward sensors have been described as "Looking through a drinking straw," and that straw is focused on that one target. Their laserheads en mass are designed to bracket at a single 1-5 KM long oval target area.

At a minimum, we talking about updating the missile to track 10-30 separate targets over a 5000KM wide circle, and be able to target each one with meter accuracy. So the sensors, onboard calculation capacity and laserhead aiming methodology needs to change.

No one is saying undoable, but it's comparing apples and... Pumpkins.

Oh, and the Grav lensing assembly to focus the nuke is designed to take the 360 degree explosion and focus it down to a few degrees wide and aim the concentrated plasma burst onto the laserheads - all moving in one direction, pointed at the one target. Even though the laserheads need pointed at 30 disparate targets, they will still need to be inside this single, narrow plasma cone to catch sufficient plasma to lase.

So they cannot freefly to aim, they need to fly straight with the rest of the flock, and only aim by rotating on their center of mass without changing their flight profile.

Once again, not undoable, but different and an additional difficulty.