Sneaky missile tactics

I really appreciate the great responses, you've definitely helped me create a better idea of the (theoretical) practicalities of missile combat in the Honorverse.

I'm going to just list what my (probably wrong) interpretation of what was said. Just so I've got a basis in mind that you all know for my next questions and thoughts, because I still feel like under the right circumstances this might work. And not just against Sollies either, possibly against Mesan forces as well, although the chances of success would decrease drastically once its used for the first time.
So it seems that the Apollo missiles are already utilizing a 2nd wave tactic, because they need to hover behind the first wave in order to communicate effectively.

The acceleration differential between missile waves would be too great for a 2nd launched wave to follow so closely on the heels of the first as to take advantage of the time gap in the missile defenses of the defenders. (My solution would be to launch my "2nd wave" first, allow the 2nd-launched wave overtake it (for an overlapping double-wave effect) and then have the powered wave match velocities with the now-unpowered wave, until the last minute when the first wave moves in to the attack and at the very outskirts of radar range the unpowered wave powers up for the attack. And yes, PENAIDS would be vital no matter what.)

Control links, or lack thereof, might make this maneuver difficult to execute.

I did like the idea of having two different salvos: one with mostly EW, control, and jammer missiles, and the other with mostly attack missiles. My best guess is that the wave with powered wedges is going to suffer more casualties, because the sheer surprise (again, the first time the tactic is used) of having missiles spring into existence just outside the CM/PD zone of engagement will confuse the computers sufficiently, until they are reprogrammed.

Darman wrote:So it seems that the Apollo missiles are already utilizing a 2nd wave tactic, because they need to hover behind the first wave in order to communicate effectively.

No, not at all the case. Apollo is a single grouping of eight combat missiles (laser or EW) controlled by a ninth missile. The nine missiles move as a single unit flying in formation; The control missile stays in the "tail-end-charlie" or "Slot" position in the formation, but it is all one pod's launch in one wave of missiles.

Lord Skimper wrote: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.

Skimper, you keep insisting on this, even though David Weber himself says you are wrong. We have already shown you that missiles can easily maneuver tens of thousands of kilometers, even hundreds of thousands of kilometers, to the side of their direct line. While that is only a small fraction of the total path that they travel, it is quite large enough to be called maneuvering or dodging.

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.

Hutch wrote: 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.

MaxxQ wrote: maim

regular



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

Yep, you got me. I usually scan, post, re-read it on-line, cuss, and then edit. Forgot the cuss and edit part.

And you missed Antediluvian...

SWM wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote: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.

Skimper, you keep insisting on this, even though David Weber himself says you are wrong. We have already shown you that missiles can easily maneuver tens of thousands of kilometers, even hundreds of thousands of kilometers, to the side of their direct line. While that is only a small fraction of the total path that they travel, it is quite large enough to be called maneuvering or dodging.

It is a tiny percent of the distance fired. It might be enough to dodge a CM wedge but it can't change direction. It will still be going the same direction. Forward. It can dodge a little but it doesn't stop going forward. It goes which ever way the wedge points which is to the front of the missile. Which is where the missile's laser heads are. Which have to point and rotate towards the targets which they are going to flash past. Giving a second or less to fire their laser heads.

(Although I must admit I don't know if the laser 'beams' carry momentum?). Methinks relativity says they don't, logic doesn't seem to follow that but that is the way it is. But then the sensors some how can see through the time dilation, the computers operate and the lasers fire and still hit the pin head.

On top of which your missile moving hundreds of km is going to hit the missile next to it and the 20 just like it.

Although I still maintain instead of salvos one could just fire a big continuous rolling salvo.

Lord Skimper wrote:

swm wrote:Skimper, you keep insisting on this, even though David Weber himself says you are wrong. We have already shown you that missiles can easily maneuver tens of thousands of kilometers, even hundreds of thousands of kilometers, to the side of their direct line. While that is only a small fraction of the total path that they travel, it is quite large enough to be called maneuvering or dodging.

It is a tiny percent of the distance fired. It might be enough to dodge a CM wedge but it can't change direction. It will still be going the same direction. Forward. It can dodge a little but it doesn't stop going forward. It goes which ever way the wedge points which is to the front of the missile. Which is where the missile's laser heads are. Which have to point and rotate towards the targets which they are going to flash past. Giving a second or less to fire their laser heads.

(Although I must admit I don't know if the laser 'beams' carry momentum?). Methinks relativity says they don't, logic doesn't seem to follow that but that is the way it is. But then the sensors some how can see through the time dilation, the computers operate and the lasers fire and still hit the pin head.

On top of which your missile moving hundreds of km is going to hit the missile next to it and the 20 just like it.

Although I still maintain instead of salvos one could just fire a big continuous rolling salvo.

So what it if is a tiny percentage of the total flight path. It is still called maneuvering. And it is quite enough for a missile spread to scatter out into a dispersed cloud, to dodge counter-missiles, and to change targets, all of which we have seen in the books.

No one has said that missiles turn right angles or anything silly like that. You are just using a definition of maneuvering which is too narrow. Being able to swing tens of thousands of kilometers to either side of the overall flight path is extremely significant in a missile battle.

By the way, the wedge shuts off just before the warhead rotates to aim at the target and release the individual laserhead devices.

Also, if I am understanding you, Relativity does in fact say that light and laser beams carry momentum. And there's no reason why missiles couldn't "see through" time dilation. The time dilation that a missile experiences is not that bad. At most it is a gamma of less than 2.5, even for MDMs.

This thread reminded me of a section from OBS mentioning staggered launches and using the first missile as a cover for the second.

From OBS

"They suckered me, Sir," Jamal admitted. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his fingers were already racing across his panel. "They fired a pair of laser warheads and staggered their launch." He pressed the commit key, locking his new firing orders into the point defense computers, and twisted around to return his captain's look. "The interval was less than half a second, but the lead missile mounted some kind of ECM emitter, Captain. I'm not sure what it was, but it covered the gap between their launch times. The computers thought they were coming in simultaneously, and our fire solution missed the separation, so we nailed the lead bird, but the second one got through. It won't happen again, Sir."

Now, this is the old Fearless with the limited missile capability of the ships at the time. However, even with pod launched salvos, I don't see how something similar couldn't be implemented. Especially considering the increased capability of EW assets.

The only thing I can imagine that would make a significant difference is the distances involved in modern missile combat. Could an EW platform (and there is a suggestion there are more EW options than Dragon's Teeth and Dazzlers) still manage to spoof an enemies sensors over a much greater extended range?

Borealis wrote:This thread reminded me of a section from OBS mentioning staggered launches and using the first missile as a cover for the second.

From OBS

"They suckered me, Sir," Jamal admitted. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his fingers were already racing across his panel. "They fired a pair of laser warheads and staggered their launch." He pressed the commit key, locking his new firing orders into the point defense computers, and twisted around to return his captain's look. "The interval was less than half a second, but the lead missile mounted some kind of ECM emitter, Captain. I'm not sure what it was, but it covered the gap between their launch times. The computers thought they were coming in simultaneously, and our fire solution missed the separation, so we nailed the lead bird, but the second one got through. It won't happen again, Sir."

Now, this is the old Fearless with the limited missile capability of the ships at the time. However, even with pod launched salvos, I don't see how something similar couldn't be implemented. Especially considering the increased capability of EW assets.

The only thing I can imagine that would make a significant difference is the distances involved in modern missile combat. Could an EW platform (and there is a suggestion there are more EW options than Dragon's Teeth and Dazzlers) still manage to spoof an enemies sensors over a much greater extended range?

Yes you can do that no problem, but that's not what the OP was talking about.

He wants to have a missile with its wedge up cover a missile with *no* wedge up yet, the idea being that missiles are really only detectable due to their wedges. This way, CMs and PDLCs can take out the lead missile, then move on, having not detected the trailing missile, at which point, the trailer will eventually light off its drive for the final attack run.

Both missiles (probably MDMs) would be launched using their wedges, probably a split-second apart as you suggest (and pointed out in textev), and use the first two drives. After the second drive burns out, the lead missile would activate its third drive, while the trailer would coast in the shadow of the leader's wedge.

As I pointed out earlier, that doesn't work because the lead missile will pull away from the trailer instantly, and while the lead may take another minute to reach its target, the trailer would take several times that to get there.

As was also mentioned, you would pretty much have to launch the trailer *first*, then have the "lead" missile catch up and pass it. But as also mentioned earlier, the trailer would have been tracked while its drives were operating. Having it shut down and coast wouldn't really hide it all that much, because it will still be on whatever course it was on when the wedge shut down, making it pretty damn easy to predict where it will be when it eventually lights up the third drive. Which, in turn, makes it easy for the target ship to move out of the way somewhat.

Late to the game, but a variant of this is likely part of EVERY missile attack, just part of a single massive salvo.

Here's the "man on the spot, microsecond by microsecond review" of what happens WHEN the Dazzlers and Dragons Teeth come online to totally confuzzle the enemy counter-missile (CM) and point-defense clusters, as programmed by the ship's computers, in one easy surmise:

The Manticoran ECM /Pen aids start with showing WAY to many targets out there to be shot at blindly, HOWEVER that only saves the attack missile from a big fat counter missile wedge or defense laser IF the missiles vary their individual accelerations slightly.

At C-fractional terminal velocities, even that tiny "jitter: will move the missiles' laser head(s) a matter of kilometers from the predicted time/space location, but since the missile "itself" knows how far it moved, it still knows how to target the ship it is attacking.

By the way, the two salvo approach works "somewhat" only when it is appropriate in a live battle, especially because of the tactical possibilities imparted by the FTL com & drones.

What's hard to do is find a battle where it would be worth it.
The problem is, except in a few scenarios, you can't make the opp force manuever to where two salvos would be enough.

But for the sake of discussion, let's say SD(p)s task groups A & B come over the hyper wall, and the opposing set of ships have only a couple of choices available to them. Maybe a star, planet, space habitat, or micky mouse is in the way or has to be defended, just so they have to manuever towards one of two courses. So you launch two big-ole "half salvos" visibly so that their impeller drives hide the second salvo's size and course to a limited extent, and then those missiles go ballistic, hurrying to an ambush point.

Your visible salvo hurries towards the Op Force, cutting off an option and forcing them to defend from a known threat while the real threat coast ballistically along to it's ambush point.


Then Salvo B's drive(s) come up and the op force is toast because they couldn't track those missiles well enough to hit them with CM fire while defending against the first attack.

Sound similar a similar event that happened at the end of the Battle of Manticore, anyone?

Chin's Fifth fleet had one goal: destroy Third Fleet. Driving ONLY in that direction, and Honor's ships jump them, launch missiles, Fifth fleet changes direction somewhat, but still pursuing the same goal, with Kuzak's Third Fleet still pounding out progressively smaller but very visible missile salvos) and at the last minute, the MDM's come back on line with Apollo FTL guidance and... not enough time for Fifth Fleet to hyper out or achieve effective counter fire.