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Grav lance Oct 2002
Missile orientation during flight Oct 2002
Missile pods: where are they tractored? Oct 2002
Missile pods as strap-on weapons? Oct 2002
Missile pod launchers Oct 2002
Missile pods: how well can you fit pods/box launchers on the exterior of a hull? Oct 2002
VLS cells for light units Oct 2002
Missile power systems Oct 2002
What happened to Erewhon's League Membership? Oct 2002
How do the Sollies regard the Havenite War? Oct 2002

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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.