Sneaky missile tactics

lyonheart wrote:Hi MaxxQ,

While we have textev the Apollo AI is hidden in the shadow of the rest of salvo, that's an 8-1 ratio, which makes it a rather poor tactic and a 50-50 ratio extremely unlikely to provide that shadow.

But my understanding is that it's back there less to specifically try and hide, than to have a clear signal path up the open kilt of it's 8 controlled missiles' wedges. The fact that hanging back a bit makes it less likely to get picked off by CMs is more like a nice bonus.


That said, I believe we once saw half a broadside lag slightly behind to let the ECM spoof the defender into screwing up their CM intercept solutions. But in that case they weren't trying to hide half the missiles; just confuse the enemy about exactly where they were.

MDMs and DDMs have the capability to incorporate a ballistic phase to their trajectory.

It is also cannon that Honorverse technology has difficulty tracking ships and missiles that do not have an active impeller drive. A classic example is Honor sneaking up on enemy ships at Cerebus. The Haven State Sec goons failed to notice ships whose fusion rocket plumes emitted about 10,000 more energy than is reflected or absorbed and reradiated by a planet.

1eex9 x 5eex3 x 3eex7 = 1.5eex20 Watts

1eex4 x 1eex4 x 1eex6 x 1eex3 = 1eex17

I myself attribute this myopia to a pandemic of cranial-rectal insertion syndrome among Honorverse naval commanders.

We have seen various examples of a ballistic phase being incorporated in missile trajectories. See First Manticore.

As someone else has noted, evasive maneuvers to evade ballistic missiles are employed. Once again, see First Manticore.

The evasive distance is 1/2aT^2.

Given a 1,000 second missile flight time, a target ship accelerating at 500 gees can be 2,500,000 kilometers away from it's predicted location.

Missiles can activate their second drive to correct for this evasion.

The same equation applies. However; missile drives have 1,000 times the accelleration of ship drives. The needed drive time to correct is 1 / (1,000)^1/2 of the duration of the ballistic phase or about 1/30 or about 30 seconds. This might be smaller if the random component of ship accelleration was smaller than base accelleration.

Bottom line is that it could work against an enemy that was not using a random component to it's accelleration to evade ballistic missiles.

namelessfly wrote:MDMs and DDMs have the capability to incorporate a ballistic phase to their trajectory.

It is also cannon that Honorverse technology has difficulty tracking ships and missiles that do not have an active impeller drive. A classic example is Honor sneaking up on enemy ships at Cerebus. The Haven State Sec goons failed to notice ships whose fusion rocket plumes emitted about 10,000 more energy than is reflected or absorbed and reradiated by a planet.

1eex9 x 5eex3 x 3eex7 = 1.5eex20 Watts

1eex4 x 1eex4 x 1eex6 x 1eex3 = 1eex17

I myself attribute this myopia to a pandemic of cranial-rectal insertion syndrome among Honorverse naval commanders.

We have seen various examples of a ballistic phase being incorporated in missile trajectories. See First Manticore.

As someone else has noted, evasive maneuvers to evade ballistic missiles are employed. Once again, see First Manticore.

The evasive distance is 1/2aT^2.

Given a 1,000 second missile flight time, a target ship accelerating at 500 gees can be 2,500,000 kilometers away from it's predicted location.

Missiles can activate their second drive to correct for this evasion.

The same equation applies. However; missile drives have 1,000 times the accelleration of ship drives. The needed drive time to correct is 1 / (1,000)^1/2 of the duration of the ballistic phase or about 1/30 or about 30 seconds. This might be smaller if the random component of ship accelleration was smaller than base accelleration.

Bottom line is that it could work against an enemy that was not using a random component to it's accelleration to evade ballistic missiles.

Question: Assuming MDMs launched from pods. *All* pods flushed at the same time. All missiles have the same accel using first two drives. At third drive ignition, half the missiles *don't* light up third drive until, say... 2.5m km from target.

Assuming the target is 65m km away, and is *not* trying to avoid missiles on a ballistic phase, what is the time difference to laserhead attack range for both sets of missiles (those which continued on with third drive and those which delayed third drive ignition)?

I’m not sure what all’s been posted already, but the main issue I see with this is that: if the 2nd salvo is hidden behind the wedge of the first salvo, so the targets can’t see them. Then the targets are likewise hidden behind the 1st salvo so the 2nd salvo can’t see the target (sniper axiom - If you can see me then I can see you.) To do this: The 1st salvo would need a psudo-Apollo missile designed to be in the 1st salvo, and feed target info to the 2nd salvo. Also you would want to fire the “2nd“ salvo 1st so that the “1st” salvo bypasses it in flight while its drives are down. The “1st” salvo would consist of mostly decoys and data-link missiles. This might work a few times but once info got out on it then the lead salvo could be ignored and AMS held back for the 2nd – this could run into a tactics races of switching the 2 salvos (which has the live missiles? Do you ignore the 1st salvo or the 2nd ?)

namelessfly wrote:MDMs and DDMs have the capability to incorporate a ballistic phase to their trajectory.

It is also cannon that Honorverse technology has difficulty tracking ships and missiles that do not have an active impeller drive. A classic example is Honor sneaking up on enemy ships at Cerebus. The Haven State Sec goons failed to notice ships whose fusion rocket plumes emitted about 10,000 more energy than is reflected or absorbed and reradiated by a planet.

fly, I will never question your math and I will (seldom) question your shower fetish,and even with your andelvian politics, I still rather like you, but you've done this once too often and the grammar nazi in me takes over the keyboard....

CANON is a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works (like the Honorverse). It is also a manufacturer of pretty good cameras.

CANNON is a large metal cylinder that fires other bits of metal at your enemies with intent to main and destroy.

That is all.

We now return to regualr programming.

MAD-4A wrote:I’m not sure what all’s been posted already, but the main issue I see with this is that: if the 2nd salvo is hidden behind the wedge of the first salvo, so the targets can’t see them. Then the targets are likewise hidden behind the 1st salvo so the 2nd salvo can’t see the target (sniper axiom - If you can see me then I can see you.) To do this: The 1st salvo would need a psudo-Apollo missile designed to be in the 1st salvo, and feed target info to the 2nd salvo. Also you would want to fire the “2nd“ salvo 1st so that the “1st” salvo bypasses it in flight while its drives are down. The “1st” salvo would consist of mostly decoys and data-link missiles. This might work a few times but once info got out on it then the lead salvo could be ignored and AMS held back for the 2nd – this could run into a tactics races of switching the 2 salvos (which has the live missiles? Do you ignore the 1st salvo or the 2nd ?)

Early in the series, a discussion on the the missile salvo was discussed as attacking inside the refresh window of a ship's defenses. (Particuliarly, the discussion was on the coordination of fire from multiple ships). If you string out the salvo too far, CMs and PDLCs which fired at the begining of the salvo can have a 2nd shot at the tail of the salvo. CMs usually reload in 8 seconds, so you want the entirety of your both your 1st and 2nd salvo to be completely through the defensive envelope inside this 8 second window - any more than that and you are running into completely refreshed defenses interdicting some of your missiles.

Point defense is guided by active radar and lidar so all attacking missiles can be seen crossing the defensive envelope, unless the defenses are jammed or the attacking missiles are precisely in the visual shaddow of another missile (which is difficuly against multiple radar arrays). Hiding in a grav shaddow will only allow the active defenses to be confused into expending defensive capabilities of an entire refresh window on the missiles at the front of the salvo

Hutch wrote:

namelessfly wrote:MDMs and DDMs have the capability to incorporate a ballistic phase to their trajectory.

It is also cannon that Honorverse technology has difficulty tracking ships and missiles that do not have an active impeller drive. A classic example is Honor sneaking up on enemy ships at Cerebus. The Haven State Sec goons failed to notice ships whose fusion rocket plumes emitted about 10,000 more energy than is reflected or absorbed and reradiated by a planet.

fly, I will never question your math and I will (seldom) question your shower fetish,and even with your andelvian politics, I still rather like you, but you've done this once too often and the grammar nazi in me takes over the keyboard....

CANON is a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works (like the Honorverse). It is also a manufacturer of pretty good cameras.

CANNON is a large metal cylinder that fires other bits of metal at your enemies with intent to main and destroy.

That is all.

We now return to regualr programming.

maim

regular



(and yes, I realize that both were probably fat-finger typos, but I just couldn't resist)

Darman wrote:There are a few questions I have about it myself:
Can an MDM be launched, go to maximum acceleration, then cut its wedge and coast along on a ballistic trajectory for X minutes, and then have its drive be programmed to turn back on for the final approach?

In principle yes but since missile drives can only be started once and then have constant thrust, you need to keep one stage in reserve, reducing maximum terminal velocity. The Mesan Cataphract missiles use a similar tactic (and achieved surprise in the first use) but those are essentially single drive missiles with a short-lived high acceleration drive tacked on.

Darman wrote:Would such a tactic actually catch an enemy off guard? Or would they be able to see through the first volley of missiles and count the total launches and figure out what was happening?

Since missile salvoes can be tracked individually you likely can't hide a complete one, but letting part of a salvo sneak in by using the final drive in a sprint mode close to the target should be possible.

Darman wrote:I was pondering how effective a salvo of MDMs would be if it was hidden behind an initial salvo. I'm not entirely sure what the sensor shadow of a salvo of missiles would be, but if a force of podnoughts rolled 2 salvos worth of pods and volley-fired them with the first salvo programmed to go the whole distance under power but the second salvo is supposed to cut its own power a few seconds before the initial salvo reaches the enemy. The idea being that salvo #2 comes in on a ballistic course until the last second, when its drives light back up again for final approach maneuvers.

There are a few questions I have about it myself:
Can an MDM be launched, go to maximum acceleration, then cut its wedge and coast along on a ballistic trajectory for X minutes, and then have its drive be programmed to turn back on for the final approach?

Would such a tactic actually catch an enemy off guard? Or would they be able to see through the first volley of missiles and count the total launches and figure out what was happening?

How well can missiles be seen at a distance using radar if their impeller wedges aren't active?

The problem with turning the wedge on for final maneuvers is that the missiles don't manuever. They can move a little bit but it isn't like a Sam or aam missile against a plane. They can turn a few degrees but they are moving so fast and not all directly at the ships which they are shooting. Going ballistic sounds great, I like it, but the missiles move in various sized arcs, only a few head straight in.

Final maneuvers are mostly dodge the CM / PD and turn towards the target getting ready to fire as they fly past.

One of the problems faced by people engaged in missile combat is the volume of missles they can put into each volley.

The simplest solution is to add more launchers to a give class of ship so that you can throw more rounds than some other ship. RMN developed the ability to both fire off-bore and then stack the double broadside so that against enemy ships with the same number of tubes, the could- for a while anyway- put twice the number of missiles into each volley.

However, along with getting enough missiles onto the target to get enough hits to cripple or destroy the target, it often comes down to not only having better penetration aids but actually swamping the target's ability to engage all of your missiles so that "enough" of them get through.

There may be a reason to essentially split the targeting of half the missiles to go after ships which are not actually in front of your strike but in the majority of cases, you are going to want the maximum number of rounds in pattern (with depth so that if the leaders get destroyed, they have swept the counter missiles ahead of them) so that you CAN overwhelm the defences of your target. Giveing them an opportunity to get one more cycle of counter fire at trailing set of your volley is probably a bad idea.