Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

Theemile wrote:

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.

Glad you brought that up. The death blossom idea does not require the full power of a g-torp nor the full 3-second firing duration. Would it need such a narrow degree of focus? Open the nozzle on the garden hose and let it spray instead of squirt.

Theemile wrote: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.

penny wrote:Glad you brought that up. The death blossom idea does not require the full power of a g-torp nor the full 3-second firing duration. Would it need such a narrow degree of focus? Open the nozzle on the garden hose and let it spray instead of squirt.

What? No kind of graser (3 second or not) uses a focused nuclear explosion. So here you are talking about many X-ray laser rods, pointing in many directions (mainly ahead or to the sides), powered by that focused nuclear explosion to kill any missile that does not happen to have its wedge interposed.

You need the focusing to concentrate the power on the rods, instead of wasting it on empty space.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Glad you brought that up. The death blossom idea does not require the full power of a g-torp nor the full 3-second firing duration. Would it need such a narrow degree of focus? Open the nozzle on the garden hose and let it spray instead of squirt.

What? No kind of graser (3 second or not) uses a focused nuclear explosion. So here you are talking about many X-ray laser rods, pointing in many directions (mainly ahead or to the sides), powered by that focused nuclear explosion to kill any missile that does not happen to have its wedge interposed.

You need the focusing to concentrate the power on the rods, instead of wasting it on empty space.

going back to the Mk16 terminal sequence



When the warhead goes off in the missile body, a grav collar pinches that 360 degree explosion and focuses it onto the laserheads. They need this plasma surge to lase, to create their lasers. If the laserheads are not in the resultant plasma stream, they don't work. Oh, and the resultant laser is a product of how much energy the laserhead absorbs, so if you defocus the plasma stream, your lasers are weaker, or non-existant.

tlb wrote:

Theemile wrote: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.

penny wrote:Glad you brought that up. The death blossom idea does not require the full power of a g-torp nor the full 3-second firing duration. Would it need such a narrow degree of focus? Open the nozzle on the garden hose and let it spray instead of squirt.

What? No kind of graser (3 second or not) uses a focused nuclear explosion. So here you are talking about many X-ray laser rods, pointing in many directions (mainly ahead or to the sides), powered by that focused nuclear explosion to kill any missile that does not happen to have its wedge interposed.

You need the focusing to concentrate the power on the rods, instead of wasting it on empty space.

My apologies. The first part of the post is only peripherally related. Let me try again.

To kill missiles, the full power of a g-torp is not needed. Nor is the full 3-second firing duration.

Now here's where the misunderstanding comes in as I am trying to apply this notion to the capability of g-heads and laserheads. As far as the lasing rods, why engineer them to release a narrow beam of focused energy? Laser rods can be engineered to release their energy in a wider cone instead of a narrow beam. The beam needs to be highly collimated to attack ships but not so much for attacking missiles, lest it loses too much range. Same for the mechanism that releases the energy of a g-torp. Spread the energy instead of focusing it to get the necessary destructive effect to take on sidewalls. All targets with wedges require much less energy to destroy them down the throat. That is my understanding of a golden BB.

Essentially, allow the beam to diverge within some still effective angle of degree. A diverging beam at the standoff range of 50,000 km is going to penetrate more targets down the throat. Again, lest it decreases standoff range too much.

At any rate, to be clear, all of the existing applications utilize the beam to destroy much more resistant targets like sidewalls. No application is made to exclusively target down the throat.

penny wrote:All targets with wedges require much less energy to destroy them down the throat. That is my understanding of a golden BB.

That's not actually true.
Some targets are just as hard to kill down the throat (they've got a bow wall that's up, or a buckler wall that's are the perfect angle to block your fire)

Other targets are just as easy to kill from the sides (missiles and more merchant ships have no sidewalls, so the sides of their wedge are just as vulnerable as the throat of it. And warships that are caught flat footed won't have their sidewalls up)

And a Golden BB requires more than simply any hit without a sidewall in the way.
Even that most warships and a lucky merchant ship can survive (say the shot only hits their cargo bay). A Golden BB requires the hit to pick off something critical that either cripples or kills that ship way faster than statistically likely. (For example one hit that punches right through an active fusion reactor; or takes out enough impellers to drop the wedge)


The aircraft example from WWII would be something like the coolant line on a liquid cooled single engine fighter. Usually you'd expect a WWII fighter to survive several hundred rounds of rifle caliber machine-gun fire - but if just one round takes out the engine's coolant the plane isn't making it home. So you could get a single round kill from a perfectly placed shot; a Golden BB.

(That coolant vulnerability is part of the reason why US destructive testing showed that single engine aircraft with air-cooled radials were several times harder to kill than ones with liquid cooled V-12 (or V-whatever) engines. The slimmer non-radials had sufficiently more single points of failure that a random hit was statistically far more likely to cripple their engines; leading to loss of aircraft)

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:All targets with wedges require much less energy to destroy them down the throat. That is my understanding of a golden BB.

That's not actually true.
Some targets are just as hard to kill down the throat (they've got a bow wall that's up, or a buckler wall that's are the perfect angle to block your fire)

Other targets are just as easy to kill from the sides (missiles and more merchant ships have no sidewalls, so the sides of their wedge are just as vulnerable as the throat of it. And warships that are caught flat footed won't have their sidewalls up)

And a Golden BB requires more than simply any hit without a sidewall in the way.
Even that most warships and a lucky merchant ship can survive (say the shot only hits their cargo bay). A Golden BB requires the hit to pick off something critical that either cripples or kills that ship way faster than statistically likely. (For example one hit that punches right through an active fusion reactor; or takes out enough impellers to drop the wedge)


The aircraft example from WWII would be something like the coolant line on a liquid cooled single engine fighter. Usually you'd expect a WWII fighter to survive several hundred rounds of rifle caliber machine-gun fire - but if just one round takes out the engine's coolant the plane isn't making it home. So you could get a single round kill from a perfectly placed shot; a Golden BB.

(That coolant vulnerability is part of the reason why US destructive testing showed that single engine aircraft with air-cooled radials were several times harder to kill than ones with liquid cooled V-12 (or V-whatever) engines. The slimmer non-radials had sufficiently more single points of failure that a random hit was statistically far more likely to cripple their engines; leading to loss of aircraft)

That isn't exactly what I meant, though close. I am not saying that the application would make it easier to get X-Rays past a bow wall or a buckler. I am simply saying that once past a bow wall or a buckler, that a even the destructive power of a Golden BB can still have destructive consequences. IOW, even a much lower powered laser head can destroy a coolant system as well as a well-placed shot from a BB gun instead of a huge .50 caliber round.

So the lower energy released from a divergent beam would still be enough to destroy a missile if it is successful to penetrate down the throat.

I am banking on the notion that even the energy from our current lasers would be enough to destroy a missile if it penetrates the throat. Thus, even a very divergent beam would still be effective enough to destroy a missile down the throat; if it lands down the throat. Even a BB can kill a human if it lands on the right spot.


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penny wrote:Now here's where the misunderstanding comes in as I am trying to apply this notion to the capability of g-heads and laserheads. As far as the lasing rods, why engineer them to release a narrow beam of focused energy? Laser rods can be engineered to release their energy in a wider cone instead of a narrow beam. The beam needs to be highly collimated to attack ships but not so much for attacking missiles, lest it loses too much range. Same for the mechanism that releases the energy of a g-torp. Spread the energy instead of focusing it to get the necessary destructive effect to take on sidewalls. All targets with wedges require much less energy to destroy them down the throat. That is my understanding of a golden BB.

The focused power is the whole idea of the laserhead, in space a nuke has virtually no damage capability at a distance - most of the effects most people associate with a nuke are 2nd or 3rd level effects due to the atmosophere. In space, the energy of a nuke dissipates at x^3 distance.

Hence, prior to the laserhead concept, you had 2 missile options, "Boom" - a Contact nuke (where you get the nuke virtually in contact with the target before you set it off.) and "Burn" where you set off the nuke relatively close tothe target (>10,000KM) and somehow focus the explosion at the target so a plasma wave (made up of the immolated missile body) slams into the sidewalls or ship in a focused beam.

The entire concept of the laserhead is to take the laserhead and absorb a % or 2 of the nuke and concentrate it into 1 beam a foot or so wide that cuts like a knife. The focused plasma surge of a brun nuke at 10,000 Km might burn out a sidewall if it's lucky, but a laserhead will cut through a sidewall and lengthwise through a SD and out the other side from 50,000 KM away.

Without the focusing effect of first the grav lens, then the laserhead, a Nuke wouldn't have enough oomph to overwhelm navigational particle shields at ~10KM. If you built a lasing rod that didn't coliminate properly and "spray" energy in a cone, again, it would have an effective range measured in kilometers, not thousands of them. You would effectively built a flashcube, not a laser.

penny wrote:That isn't exactly what I meant, though close. I am not saying that the application would make it easier to get X-Rays past a bow wall or a buckler. I am simply saying that once past a bow wall or a buckler, that a even the destructive power of a Golden BB can still have destructive consequences. IOW, even a much lower powered laser head can destroy a coolant system as well as a well-placed shot from a BB gun instead of a huge .50 caliber round.

So the lower energy released from a divergent beam would still be enough to destroy a missile if it is successful to penetrate down the throat.

I am banking on the notion that even the energy from our current lasers would be enough to destroy a missile if it penetrates the throat. Thus, even a very divergent beam would still be effective enough to destroy a missile down the throat; if it lands down the throat. Even a BB can kill a human if it lands on the right spot.

The important thing about the golden BB is the lucky point of impact; if a beam hits nothing important, then it is regular BB - only one that hits something important is golden. Going down the throat of a wedge could still miss the missile.

If you decollinate a laser beam, then you lose the most important thing about a laser: the way it retains power over distance. Once it starts spreading, then power goes down by the inverse of the area. So at certain distance the beam has an area A, then at the distance where the beam has an area four times as big there is a fourth of the power per target area. If the beam starts at 1 meter across (for illustration only); by the time it is big enough to cover the entire throat (say 1 kilometer), the power per square meter has gone down by a factor of 1 million.

Jonathan_S wrote:
The aircraft example from WWII SNIP... a Golden BB.

(That coolant vulnerability is part of the reason why US destructive testing showed that single engine aircraft with air-cooled radials were several times harder to kill than ones with liquid cooled V-12

The MUCH better example would be Pitch propeller mechanism. A bullet hits that, the aircraft is NOT coming home regardless of engine type. Also, most aircraft in WWII were lost due to mechanical failure, NOT enemy action. Less complex more reliable = get home.

Coolant "BB" problems is also dependent on radiator type and placement. For instance OIL coolers get hit --> Aircraft are NOT coming home in majority of cases. ALL aircraft have oil coolers. True on radials or inline. On inline water cooled engines there is just a MUCH MUCH larger AREA to hit. Though even that is not true. P47's oilcooler was armored, other radial oil coolers(corsair) not so much.

One reason P51 is much faster than its competitors(roughly 7-->10 mph depending on how much sustained HP is being discussed) is due to its VERY compact radiator design. There is a reason no one ever publishes a picture of a spitfire or 109 from the BOTTOM of the aircraft. They are ugly with a capital GHASTLY connotation with GIANT bullet and drag inducing air breathing radiators under BOTH the wings(later models) Early models with lower HP only had 1 under 1 side. So, as war went on Me109's and Spitfires became Twice as vulnerable, prone to being hit in the radiators and crashing. No one bothers to mention this basic fact for why Me109 loss ratios skyrocketed later in the war even as their pilots were at peak experience as very few like discussing aircraft LOSS per sortie ratio or cause of loss. They by and large just chalk it up to inferior aircraft(they weren't until late 44 when USA introduced superior fuel) or inferior pilots(late war is true certainly, but even then not exactly true)

Aircraft like P47 had a loss ratio 6X lower than that of P51 for instance, was produced in larger numbers, fought in ALL theatres, and for far longer, was tasked with ground pounding late in the war, yet still had lower loss ratio. P47 ALSO had a loss ratio 2X lower than that of the P38 with 2, yes 2!!! engines! Corsair, loss ratios are higher but it was flying nearly exclusively over water and it is less likely to be lost than P51. Spitfire was even worse loss ratio(we only have USA sortie ratio in Med theatre when USA flew Spits, not UK numbers-->maybe they exist? But I have never seen them). We do not know loss ratio of Me109 as often they got to land, be repaired and flown again. Just as the Hurricane/Spitfires were able to do so in Battle of Britain.

Yet one more reason no warship should EVER have its structure made out of Aluminum. Fire is most common cause of ship severe damage even in wartime and aluminum loses structural integrity at low temps. US carrier Bohemien Richie a couple years ago was lost due to arson because of this garbage design since its main structure was made from aluminum instead of STEEL! Design matters, not just overall grade school Block drawingsgg

PS: WWII discussion never bother to mention Loss rates between Lancaster and Handley Paige, verses their radial USA/UK counterparts. ALL air cooled radial bomber version had lower loss rates yet Lancaster/Handley Paige Halifax used inline merlin engines and had near identical loss rates.

Wait... missiles have bow walls and bucklers? I'm not saying that they don't. I just didn't get the memo.

To be sure, I am not suggesting not to collimate the beam. Just not as much. I am banking on missiles not needing sledgehammers to destroy them down the throat. I could be wrong, but that is my suggestion today in class.