Future Point Defense Options

How many Vipers can you fit into X existing missle body or How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

If you put Counter Missiles "in front" of an incomming volley of missles way before they reach the ranges at which any ECM are expected to be needed by the enemy force, your control missles (Apollo) or even Ghost Rider SHOULD be able to get high intercept rates way out beyond your normal engagement envelope and way earlier than your opponent would expect. That begins to force them -at least after the first exchange- of using their own ECM/Decoys early (some of them anyway) to avoid having their volleys reduced but it then leaves them with fewer ECM when their missiles reach the point where "normal" CMs and point defence energy weapons would come into play.

The point is to degrade the attacker's salvo density and probably reduce the number of ECM shots that your ships (and LACs) have to deal with in the enemy's missle terminal run stage.

Ok, for the SLN vs RMN &RHN engagements at this point we are seeing shoals of missiles but that is from SDs- on both sides. The thing is, if you can kill a number of their anti-ship missiles way out beyond their engagement range, and degrade their decoy/ECM strength, you reduce the number of probable hits you are going to absorb on your ships. That would also carry down through lighter ships.
You also don't have to keep this up through the entire lengths of engagements as we have now been shown. The engagements will not last as long. The only way to actualy stop or shorten the engagements is to stop the SLN ships from firing. By cutting down on the potential number of hits you could expect to receive( early destruction of incomming weapons, improving your own tactical control by lowering the targets you have to intercept) , you are able to put more fire onto the enemy because you -hopefully- are not going to take as much damage and so be able to continue to fire full salvos because you are not losing tubes and taking other damage.
Of course you have to at least mission-kill the other side before you run out of ammunition.

It may be possible to do this with tractored pods of missles with CM canesters. How about (providing Haven could provide the cannesters and pods) using OLD designed pod launched missiles and swapping out the warheads for cannester of CMs? You don't actually need MDMs for this, the powered flight range for the older, single drive missiles is plenty. You don't have to reach out to MDM range, you only have to reach ALMOST as far as any of the SLN missle weapons are good for in powered flight.
Beat the snot out of their ships with MDMs and if/when they get close enough for their shorter ranged missles get early CM kills with the canister rounds.

Guys, I've already looked at MaxxQ's portrait of missile sizes. That's why I stated quite definitively that you cannot fit any existing counter-missile into the warhead section of any existing missile, including the MK-23. The warhead section is only a small fraction of the missile body you see in his illustration. Tell me exactly how are you going to fit a counter-missile into a section of the MK-23 that is, maybe, half the length of the counter-missile?!

[edit]I just read through the thread which was cited above. MaxxQ said that a MK-23 body could fit 4 MK-30/31 or Viper counter-missiles, but ONLY IF you took out one of the drive rings on the MK-23. So I stand by my statement. No existing counter-missile can fit inside the warhead section of any existing missile.

From MaxxQ's statement, I conclude that he believes that it would be possible to design a Manticoran missile carrying a canister of 4 counter-missiles; in fact, it might even fit 2 drives. Whether it would be practical is another question, but I would certainly say that a single-drive would be possible even if a dual-drive isn't.[/edit]

SWM wrote:Guys, I've already looked at MaxxQ's portrait of missile sizes. That's why I stated quite definitively that you cannot fit any existing counter-missile into the warhead section of any existing missile, including the MK-23. The warhead section is only a small fraction of the missile body you see in his illustration. Tell me exactly how are you going to fit a counter-missile into a section of the MK-23 that is, maybe, half the length of the counter-missile?!

In place of that green stuff and the warhead forward of it. That green stuff is the lasing rods and they are roughly the same length as the Mk-31 CM

The Mk 23 appears to be just less than twice the diameter of the Viper/Mk31, or roughly twice the diameter of a Mk 21 CM.

Since a CM carrier stage doesn't need multiple drives, some extra length can be obtained by deleting two of a Mk23's drives.

Weird Harold wrote:

SWM wrote:Guys, I've already looked at MaxxQ's portrait of missile sizes. That's why I stated quite definitively that you cannot fit any existing counter-missile into the warhead section of any existing missile, including the MK-23. The warhead section is only a small fraction of the missile body you see in his illustration. Tell me exactly how are you going to fit a counter-missile into a section of the MK-23 that is, maybe, half the length of the counter-missile?!

In place of that green stuff and the warhead forward of it. That green stuff is the lasing rods and they are roughly the same length as the Mk-31 CM

The Mk 23 appears to be just less than twice the diameter of the Viper/Mk31, or roughly twice the diameter of a Mk 21 CM.

Since a CM carrier stage doesn't need multiple drives, some extra length can be obtained by deleting two of a Mk23's drives.

I was very specific and said the WARHEAD SECTION (I am including the lasing rods as part of the warhead section). Is anybody actually reading what I am writing? If you have to take out a drive or two, you are no longer talking about just the warhead section, and you are designing a new missile.

SWM wrote:I was very specific and said the WARHEAD SECTION (I am including the lasing rods as part of the warhead section). Is anybody actually reading what I am writing? If you have to take out a drive or two, you are no longer talking about just the warhead section, and you are designing a new missile.

Yes, then it's a major redesign job instead of a systems integration job. Lot more work, a lot more time.

SWM wrote:I was very specific and said the WARHEAD SECTION (I am including the lasing rods as part of the warhead section). Is anybody actually reading what I am writing? If you have to take out a drive or two, you are no longer talking about just the warhead section, and you are designing a new missile.

I'll just quote Maxqq from a 21 May 2014 post:

Maxqq wrote:OTOH, I can think of better ways to extend CM range without all the complications of boosters separating and continuing on to take out incoming attack missiles.

One method would be to take out a single Mk23 from a pod, and replace it with a modified Mk23. I just checked my meshes, and this would allow four CMs (either regular Mk30/31 or four Mk9 Vipers with a drive ring on the carrier missile removed) to be carried along with the rest of the Apollo missiles (seven attack Mk23s and the Apollo Control Missile) for as far as the drives would last.

The CMs could be released when the drive is shut down (or burns out), and, with a little reprogramming of the ACM targeting systems, and under the control of the ACM, proceed on to intercept incoming missiles. With the FTL links to the command ship(s), this would help to reduce the control loop problems of long distance CM flight profiles.

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:I was very specific and said the WARHEAD SECTION (I am including the lasing rods as part of the warhead section). Is anybody actually reading what I am writing? If you have to take out a drive or two, you are no longer talking about just the warhead section, and you are designing a new missile.

Yes, then it's a major redesign job instead of a systems integration job. Lot more work, a lot more time.

Uh not really. Why? No reason to take the drive unit out. Just make the missile longer. The ONLY reason this might not be possible is the pods themselves cannot accommodate a slightly longer missile anymore. Sounds HIGHLY unlikely when they are producing 4 drive system defense missiles in "probably" the same pod. I could possibly see the system defense pods being new design for longer duration.

PS. Not in favor of the MK-23 CM canister role. Doable, by highly mass intensive. Has major problems for pod selection in a Podnaughts core etc.

Weird Harold wrote:

SWM wrote:I was very specific and said the WARHEAD SECTION (I am including the lasing rods as part of the warhead section). Is anybody actually reading what I am writing? If you have to take out a drive or two, you are no longer talking about just the warhead section, and you are designing a new missile.

I'll just quote Maxqq from a 21 May 2014 post:

Maxqq wrote:OTOH, I can think of better ways to extend CM range without all the complications of boosters separating and continuing on to take out incoming attack missiles.

One method would be to take out a single Mk23 from a pod, and replace it with a modified Mk23. I just checked my meshes, and this would allow four CMs (either regular Mk30/31 or four Mk9 Vipers with a drive ring on the carrier missile removed) to be carried along with the rest of the Apollo missiles (seven attack Mk23s and the Apollo Control Missile) for as far as the drives would last.

The CMs could be released when the drive is shut down (or burns out), and, with a little reprogramming of the ACM targeting systems, and under the control of the ACM, proceed on to intercept incoming missiles. With the FTL links to the command ship(s), this would help to reduce the control loop problems of long distance CM flight profiles.

And in that highlighted section is the statement "with a drive ring on the carrier missile removed". In other words, it won't fit unless you remove a drive ring from the MK-23, which means essentially designing a new missiles, which is what I've been saying all along. You have just confirmed what I have been saying. I even alluded to this statement by MaxxQ in a previous post.

SWM wrote:And in that highlighted section is the statement "with a drive ring on the carrier missile removed".

With the qualifier "or four Mk9 Vipers". Four Mk30/31 CMs will fit without removing a drive ring. The drive ring only needs to be removed if you install vipers. Any other CM will fit four.

Relax wrote:Uh not really. Why? No reason to take the drive unit out. Just make the missile longer. The ONLY reason this might not be possible is the pods themselves cannot accommodate a slightly longer missile anymore. Sounds HIGHLY unlikely when they are producing 4 drive system defense missiles in "probably" the same pod. I could possibly see the system defense pods being new design for longer duration.
.

This results in the not so minor problem that the missile doesn't fit in the SD(p) missile pods, and the newly designed and built missile pods may or may not fit in the pod bays.