Future Point Defense Options

Actually realized my posts earlier are missing a significant bit of what I am thinking: that the "close in countermissile" wouldn't be a "wedge on wedge intercepter" it would be a "bow wall defensive missile", combining enough wedge strength to push the missile forward rather slowly by comparison to standard CM speeds, with a maximally powered "bow wall" to stop incoming x-ray laser bursts.

If for example the missile's wedge throat is 10km and is nearly closed by a bow wall, that's a nice size chunk of shielding that can last through several minutes of incoming defensive fire. That would allow a single defensive missile maneuver to interpose that shield between multiple rounds of attacking missiles, even if all it has is light speed links.

It appears you need to be a lot larger to survive a wedge collision. Like thousands of tons to handle a missile wedge. Not sure if it is one thousand or fifteen thousand, but you need to be a lot larger then a missile, as a 20 ton CM will absolutely obliterate a hundred ton plus missile.

kzt wrote:So no, the way you bypass all these cute midrange ideas is by sending the missiles several million KM out of the direct path, far enough to evade CMs from something on the direct path.

Do the math, uh, read my post, your point, is blatantly wrong. FTL RD's magically vanish?

kzt wrote:It appears you need to be a lot larger to survive a wedge collision. Like thousands of tons to handle a missile wedge. Not sure if it is one thousand or fifteen thousand, but you need to be a lot larger then a missile, as a 20 ton CM will absolutely obliterate a hundred ton plus missile.

KZT, not sure which post your wedge sizing post applies to as an objection?

Relax wrote:

kzt wrote:So no, the way you bypass all these cute midrange ideas is by sending the missiles several million KM out of the direct path, far enough to evade CMs from something on the direct path.

Do the math, uh, read my post, your point, is blatantly wrong. FTL RD's magically vanish?

Sure, you know where they are going at 100,000 g. You see the second stage start, the vector change and realize that they will fly by your midrange defense with a closest approach at 8 million km range in two minutes. What exactly do you intend to do about this?

kzt wrote:Sure, you know where they are going at 100,000 g. You see the second stage start, the vector change and realize that they will fly by your midrange defense with a closest approach at 8 million km range in two minutes. What exactly do you intend to do about this?

Not talking same thing it would appear. You were not replying to me it would appear.

Clearly you are talking about a LAC CM platform. I was talking far higher percentage kills/CM along with longer legged CM's.

SharkHunter wrote:Actually realized my posts earlier are missing a significant bit of what I am thinking: that the "close in countermissile" wouldn't be a "wedge on wedge intercepter" it would be a "bow wall defensive missile", combining enough wedge strength to push the missile forward rather slowly by comparison to standard CM speeds, with a maximally powered "bow wall" to stop incoming x-ray laser bursts.

If for example the missile's wedge throat is 10km and is nearly closed by a bow wall, that's a nice size chunk of shielding that can last through several minutes of incoming defensive fire. That would allow a single defensive missile maneuver to interpose that shield between multiple rounds of attacking missiles, even if all it has is light speed links.

Not possible. There's no way a counter-missile or missile can put up a bow wall, let alone a bow wall powerful enough to completely block an x-ray laser at close range. You need to use the wedge, which is the idea which has been proposed before. The wedge will also be far bigger than the bow wall. What advantage do you see to using these counter-missiles supposedly launched just before the enemy missiles reach targeting range, instead of drones blocking with wedge which can sit out there for the entire battle?

2nd idea: and yes, I know we've already said "no pod CM solutions", argued in the past, etc., and I'm admitting this might be a Horrible Hemphill idea, (aka one that has no legs vs. one of her great working systems).

Anyway...strictly thinking about sizing, the Viper CM used by the Katanas is rather tiny - has to be useful to be carried on LACs in any useful quantities. I'm tying that small size to two more thoughts, basically starting with "MDM and DDM missile body diameters are huge by comparison". Then there's this nugget

Pearls of Weber wrote:The function of a CM canister is not to throw out hordes of CMs (which couldn't be effectively guided, anyway), but rather to allow a ship to put out all the CMs it can handle at any given moment, regardless of what has happened to its dedicated CM launchers. If, for example, you've taken a hit that destroyed three CM launchers but the guidance channels are still intact, you simply seed your next salvo of shipkillers with a CM canister, only three of whose missiles (I am assuming a 5-missile canister from a larger unit) actually spin up and go after incoming threats.

Given that the easiest time to go after attack missiles is in their initial boost phase before they get up to speed, I'm thinking that you could have a smaller percentage of Mark 16 or 23 pods with two or three "Viper canister" missiles per pod, with multiple Vipers per attack missile that separate and fire up instead of the final warhead stage of a shipkiller. Those might be launched as part of the pods with the ECM birds, and use some of the dedicated control channels of the -E to get the Vipers on target.

Okay, now ducking the noodle launching bazooka and requesting BuWeaps slaughtering or validation of the idea <cringe>.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Actually realized my posts earlier are missing a significant bit of what I am thinking: that the "close in countermissile" wouldn't be a "wedge on wedge intercepter" it would be a "bow wall defensive missile", combining enough wedge strength to push the missile forward rather slowly by comparison to standard CM speeds, with a maximally powered "bow wall" to stop incoming x-ray laser bursts.

If for example the missile's wedge throat is 10km and is nearly closed by a bow wall, that's a nice size chunk of shielding that can last through several minutes of incoming defensive fire. That would allow a single defensive missile maneuver to interpose that shield between multiple rounds of attacking missiles, even if all it has is light speed links.

Not possible. There's no way a counter-missile or missile can put up a bow wall, let alone a bow wall powerful enough to completely block an x-ray laser at close range. You need to use the wedge, which is the idea which has been proposed before. The wedge will also be far bigger than the bow wall. What advantage do you see to using these counter-missiles supposedly launched just before the enemy missiles reach targeting range, instead of drones blocking with wedge which can sit out there for the entire battle?

Size, quantity, and lower expense of the CM vs. that of drones, but similar idea, except that a bow wall could also web fratricide an attack missile further out, while providing a slow speed "shadow" to interfere with numerous missile's final attack solutions. I was thinking that the distance between the wedges was around 10KM, and given that a Sag-A stern wall "almost spun up" still saved Gauntlet, the idea was using most of the energy budget of the CM wedge for bow wall use, not acceleration.

The idea fails if the disk isn't wide enough or the bow wall nearly at sidewall + strength. Remember, it doesn't have to perfectly block the x-ray laser, just twist it or attenuate the blast away from the mother ship. Thoughts?

Valen123456 wrote:
To bring back another tech based discussion there is a paragraph in A Rising Thunder which discusses the future need for new forms of point defense given the altered MDM environment:


Lets have some ideas on how this could be achieved both in forms of the ship tactics (some of which the next paragraph discussed) and new forms of weapons/sensors/drones/ECM technology.

P.S. However lets leave out CM pods since they have been adequately discussed elsewhere.

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Having read most of the comments above,
IMHO I still lean to the layered defense.
Similar to current (20th/21st Cen Fleet) outer defense is deployed LAC's (same defense mission as FF's / DD's / DDG's now) and discussed elsewhere.
Best I see from current topic is an Apollo-Drone CM pod. recoverable and re-serviceable if not fired, but deployed as intermediate range CM asset. Apollo Control missile receives updates FTL and directs Mk32 CM's at assigned leakers from the LAC screen.
Close stationed LAC's, shipboard CM's and Grasers provide close defense.

-- Stewart