Archives

Title Posted
Warshaski sail missiles Oct 2002
<em>Wayfarer</em>'s cargo doors Oct 2002
"Weaknesses" of the SD(P) classes Oct 2002
Wedge geometry Oct 2002
The Grendelsbane yards vulnerability Oct 2002
Source of the Grayson starship reserves Oct 2002
System defense ships Oct 2002
Ground warfare Oct 2002
Hyperspace near a Wormhole Junction Oct 2002
Kinetic infrastructure attacks Oct 2002

Filters

Narrow the posts above by selecting a series or specifying a keyword.

Options

Pearls of Weber

A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.

Hardening shipkiller missile drives

  • Series: Honorverse
  • Date: June 10, 2005

A suggestion has been made that it would make sense to put drives into shipkiller missiles of sufficient power to make them immune to wedge kill by a counter-missile. Is this practical? Could it be done as the final stage of a MDM?

 

No, it isn't. And it won't be -- ever. I believe we've had this discussion before. You cannot -- not "it would be hard," not "only possible with great difficulty," but cannot -- build a missile drive sufficiently powerful to take out another missile (or counter-missile) drive without being taken out itself. End of story. The physical size constraints make it impossible. That's why counter-missiles have used their impeller wedges as their primary missile-killing weapon for so long.