Wasn't the ERM enough? Why bother with the Mk 16?

SharkHunter wrote:OK. Keep in mind that Solon proved that ships full of MK-16 pods turned out to be a bad plan, which is why in later stories the Nike Class "super battle cruiser" (my term) is continued into much greater production numbers and the Agammemnon class isn't. But that's not the subject of the original post, why develop the dual drive cruiser weight missile at all vs. extended range missiles --> which would outrange anything except Haven's MDMs.

(snip)

dreamrider wrote:
Modestly. For a little while. (Oops! Guess that window's gone - Cataphracts now outrange the ERM.)
dreamrider

I am a bit surprised this thread is still running. I haven't been around in a month, and it is still going. Thanks, guys. RE the Catatphract: With a ballistic component, that is true. Sharkhunter: the only thing Solon showed is that BCs shouldn't fight wallers. That has ALWAYS been true in RFCs writing.

Some points:
A. Roszak told Barregos the Mk17e outrange the Cataphracts carried by the PNE at Torch (CoG).

B. Filareta was impressed by the 16 1/2 M km range of the Cataphracts just prior to Manticore 2. Apparently neither of them considered a ballistic component.

C. The Andies were impressing themselves with cruiser weight missiles of something over 12M km (a full 50 percent increase over the pre-war Manticoran Mk 13). (WoH--1919, so the same timeframe as the Mk36 and a couple years into deployment for the Mk14).

D. HoS gives some 160 ships (Reliant III/IV and Saganami B) which are in service, and use the ERM. At least, if the Reliants don't, it would be utterly stupid to build them at all.

E. The ERM (Mk36) for the Avalon (and the neglected Wolfhound) is perfectly adequate in the eyes of the Manticoran Admiralty--for the missions appropriate to a light cruiser. For now.

F. My original point was, that if the lighter ships are not going to fight the Wallers and their MDMs, then their older weapons fit is fine against the opponents they should be being matched up to. Havenite MDMs are so huge, they don't use DDMs in their BCs or cruisers. So an RMN DD/LC versus the same types; CA/BCs against peers or smaller. Since none of their opponents' lighter ships (below the wall) have MDMs or DDMs, the ERM should have been enough. Especially if you factor in Manticoran stealth capabilities. After all, until the deployment of the Sollie Javelin missile, their Pilum was probably in the same 5.9 M km as the original Havenite laserheads in House of Steel. Even with the improved Javelin, the Sollies have only a 6.9 M km range; less than half of the Erewhonese Mk 17 --which doesn't match Manticoran tech exactly.

G. I never said Manticore shouldn't develop and deploy the DDM. I just thought it seemed like a quantum leap from Service of the Sword (Gauntlet 1917), where the range was immaterial (enemy was too clcse) and SoSag. That is a LOT of performance increase from the SDM to the DDM, and as Dukk and others have pointed out, it isn't just the range, but the final velocity, the greater power for emitters and so on. But, as is very clear from the text, it is DRASTIC OVERKILL against the SLN. Actually, it would likely be nearly as bad from the Havenite light warship's pov.

H. While Havenite yards may not be producing Nikes anytime soon, it might be possible to get them up to speed on a Sag-B style cruiser. After all, the only one likely to kill it is already in the Alliance. Assuming the SL collapses as fast as some of the doomsayers suspect, the league navy will never see any quantities of useful new construction--which will only _approach_ the GA's tech level, anyway. So the expected useful service life in second-line duties ought to be useful--about 15 years or so.

YMMV.

Rob

Sure, the ERM was enough. For a while. And yes, it is a quantum leap over the ERM (just as the MDM was). But Manticore knows other systems are going to start putting out MDMs and DDMs within a few years, now that everyone knows about them. Maybe the League won't manage to produce them in time, but their successor states and other neutral parties will. Manticore had plenty of reason to say that the ERM was good, but not enough.

SWM wrote:Sure, the ERM was enough. For a while. And yes, it is a quantum leap over the ERM (just as the MDM was). But Manticore knows other systems are going to start putting out MDMs and DDMs within a few years, now that everyone knows about them. Maybe the League won't manage to produce them in time, but their successor states and other neutral parties will. Manticore had plenty of reason to say that the ERM was good, but not enough.

Okay, I was going to drop it. But this is really one of my personal hobbyhorses.

"Within a few years" --? A decade or more, more likely. Aside from Technodyne and a few of the transtellers assisting Haven in the first war, no one really knows how Manticore is achieving their results. I find it unlikely that those corporations will cooperate very much; and most of the individual system governments (and their SDFs) are being caught almost as flat-footed as the ISLN. Not all of them, but I think either Manticore or Beowulf will be able to pick out the truly dangerous ones soon.

Weber has said in some of his posts, and in the books, especially HOS-- you fight with what you have, not what you wish you had. While SDMs are becoming rapidly obsolete against first-line warships, just how many flush-decker Wickes class destroyers were used in WWII? About two thirds of the total built, I think. IIRC, there were more than a hundred built, and 77 sent over to UK for lend-lease as escorts. And some remained in US service.

I am not advocating building super job lots of ships that won't continue to be useful. But I don't really think you're going to end up with hundreds of hostile nations; and you are still going to have all those miserable scruffy pirates, the need for S & R, humanitarian relief efforts. . . . . You know, second line duties. What are you using for that now?

Besides, one thing no one mentioned in this regard--you still have HUNDREDS of pre-war destroyers (like Reprise) in commission according to the 1920 fleet chart. Replacing them with Wolfhounds-type ships would let you reduce crew requirements by 3/4ths, drastically improve firepower and range and missile defense. And, without the need to fire/ maintain the new fusion-drive missiles, you could get a Havenite version into service faster than you can a Roland equivalent.


And you could sell them as export military vessels to your new trading partners.

Something else which no one mentioned-- I didn't because I didn't want the idea applied to the Sollie leftovers-- if a Mk 14 can range out to the near vicinity of a light minute why cannot the mk27c or a 120 ton replacement achieve something similar? In 1914 the Admiralty ought to have given the SD's they couldn't replace a longer reach; but not too many of them, as they were going to replace all the SDs with SDPs.

If they did do any of that, the ships so equipped would have been in service with D'Orville or Kuzak, though, and there isn't any real use now in resurrecting the older SDs.

Although, if you use them as pod carriers (like D'Orville did), a couple dozen sold to Beowulf would make a very open and obvious deterrent to Solarian interference; especially if you announce the number of pods that they carry. . . .

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

SWM wrote:Sure, the ERM was enough. For a while. And yes, it is a quantum leap over the ERM (just as the MDM was). But Manticore knows other systems are going to start putting out MDMs and DDMs within a few years, now that everyone knows about them. Maybe the League won't manage to produce them in time, but their successor states and other neutral parties will. Manticore had plenty of reason to say that the ERM was good, but not enough.

Okay, I was going to drop it. But this is really one of my personal hobbyhorses.

"Within a few years" --? A decade or more, more likely. Aside from Technodyne and a few of the transtellers assisting Haven in the first war, no one really knows how Manticore is achieving their results. I find it unlikely that those corporations will cooperate very much; and most of the individual system governments (and their SDFs) are being caught almost as flat-footed as the ISLN. Not all of them, but I think either Manticore or Beowulf will be able to pick out the truly dangerous ones soon.

Weber has said in some of his posts, and in the books, especially HOS-- you fight with what you have, not what you wish you had. While SDMs are becoming rapidly obsolete against first-line warships, just how many flush-decker Wickes class destroyers were used in WWII? About two thirds of the total built, I think. IIRC, there were more than a hundred built, and 77 sent over to UK for lend-lease as escorts. And some remained in US service.

I am not advocating building super job lots of ships that won't continue to be useful. But I don't really think you're going to end up with hundreds of hostile nations; and you are still going to have all those miserable scruffy pirates, the need for S & R, humanitarian relief efforts. . . . . You know, second line duties. What are you using for that now?

Besides, one thing no one mentioned in this regard--you still have HUNDREDS of pre-war destroyers (like Reprise) in commission according to the 1920 fleet chart. Replacing them with Wolfhounds-type ships would let you reduce crew requirements by 3/4ths, drastically improve firepower and range and missile defense. And, without the need to fire/ maintain the new fusion-drive missiles, you could get a Havenite version into service faster than you can a Roland equivalent.


And you could sell them as export military vessels to your new trading partners.

Something else which no one mentioned-- I didn't because I didn't want the idea applied to the Sollie leftovers-- if a Mk 14 can range out to the near vicinity of a light minute why cannot the mk27c or a 120 ton replacement achieve something similar? In 1914 the Admiralty ought to have given the SD's they couldn't replace a longer reach; but not too many of them, as they were going to replace all the SDs with SDPs.

If they did do any of that, the ships so equipped would have been in service with D'Orville or Kuzak, though, and there isn't any real use now in resurrecting the older SDs.

Although, if you use them as pod carriers (like D'Orville did), a couple dozen sold to Beowulf would make a very open and obvious deterrent to Solarian interference; especially if you announce the number of pods that they carry. . . .

Rob

I assume that the ERMs are larger than their SDM counterparts; if nothing else they need more capacitors to provide power for the longer run time.

So while refitting a pre-pod SD for a capital missile ERM would be less work than a fusion powered missile it wouldn't be a whole lot less than refitting for a capacitor powered MDM. You still need to refit your magazines for the new missile size and enlarge all the armored hatch ways and missile feed tube; just not enlarge them quite as much as for an MDM.

However I don't see the enhanced ERM range being worth the refit time. Not when you expect to be using your slips to be building full up SD(P)s as quickly as you can afford.

[Edit: Unless you were suggesting scalding down things like warhead size, number of lasing rods, and ECM capability to try to squeeze ERM range into something the same size as a current SDM cap ship missile. That at least wouldn't need the massive ship refits, but I think you'd be giving up a lot of capabilities to get that extra range from the same size package]

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

SWM wrote:Sure, the ERM was enough. For a while. And yes, it is a quantum leap over the ERM (just as the MDM was). But Manticore knows other systems are going to start putting out MDMs and DDMs within a few years, now that everyone knows about them. Maybe the League won't manage to produce them in time, but their successor states and other neutral parties will. Manticore had plenty of reason to say that the ERM was good, but not enough.

Okay, I was going to drop it. But this is really one of my personal hobbyhorses.

"Within a few years" --? A decade or more, more likely. Aside from Technodyne and a few of the transtellers assisting Haven in the first war, no one really knows how Manticore is achieving their results. I find it unlikely that those corporations will cooperate very much; and most of the individual system governments (and their SDFs) are being caught almost as flat-footed as the ISLN. Not all of them, but I think either Manticore or Beowulf will be able to pick out the truly dangerous ones soon.

I think you are wrong--I think we will see other star nations starting to test MDMs within 4 years. The technology was a leap, but not that big a leap. Haven managed it with only a little more time.

From my reading of HoS ship build numbers, effectively every old CL and DD was replaced with Avalon class ships. They use the ERM. Only old CL's not getting the chop were Apollo CL's whom I would presume can also fire ERM's as well. That is why not many Wolfhound class ships were built IMO. It was almost exactly what they already had with minor improvements whereas they had a DDM Roland in the pipeline. This is especially true once hostilities were resumed.

Note: 150 SAG-C were also built even though they had a pile of new build SAG-A/B. Had just proven itself in combat against 4 SLN CA's as well. Under normal conditions, an impetus to build more SAG-B while the trial version of the SAG-C in SoSag was still dinking around in the TQ. Essentially, to get 150 SAG-C's produced before OB, would have had to get the preliminary reports from the Nasty Kitty, and then immediately lay 150 down simultaneously. Personally, I think this is because RFC needed more DDM SAG-C's for Lacoon II.

SWM wrote:I think you are wrong--I think we will see other star nations starting to test MDMs within 4 years. The technology was a leap, but not that big a leap. Haven managed it with only a little more time.

There are FAR too many people who know the secret.

Every single missile service tech; every single design engineer; every single tactical officer; every single manufacturing tech; every single intel NCO or officer - in the RHN, the GSN, the RNM, the IAN, ESN, or in the SLN faction in Maya - every single one of these people has to not succumb to the opportunity to become wealthier than their wildest dreams. And exactly how do you handle SLN personnel rotating in and out of Maya?

Yes and no. Knowing the secret and being able to provide enough information for it to be reverse engineered are just not that easy, and "those in the know" have to be coerced off their ships and made available across hundred of light years to the baddies for the tech to become available.

Also, my reading is that the cataphract is almost a "Saturn IB style abortion", i.e., it's still basically an ERM where the 1st stage is completely dropped off, and then a "counter missile size impeller" provides a sprint mode at the end, giving it extra range. The Mk16 is a much "bitchier" proposition from start to finish: up to 25% of any missile salvo are the Dazzlers and Dragons Teeth penetration aids, the full extended range -- and I don't think we've even seen someone use Mark 16's the ballistic phase yet: the Battle of Manticore's ballistic missiles were MDMs.

The battle of Spindle was at the stated and known DDM range of 30MM km, using cruisers designed without Keyhole II, specifically to hide the range of the Mark 23 which is nearly double that even without a ballistic phase.

I'd assume that at some point that an RMN captain is going to have to use that range and the hitting power of the Mod-G warhead in order to protect a "must defend" target.

Service manuals almost certainly give you all the info needed for an expert to understand how it works, as would the training packages used by the service schools. Technical data packages would give you a huge headstart on actually producing the missiles.

Oh, and the other approach is obtaining an actual missile. The United States Air Force flew a small squadron of MIG-17s, 21s and 23s during the cold war. They did not get these by paying the USSR for them. They found other ways to get them, and there were not multiple millions of MIGs in service, with a large proportion of them parked in orbit somewhere isolated for months.

SharkHunter wrote:Yes and no. Knowing the secret and being able to provide enough information for it to be reverse engineered are just not that easy, and "those in the know" have to be coerced off their ships and made available across hundred of light years to the baddies for the tech to become available.

Also, my reading is that the cataphract is almost a "Saturn IB style abortion", i.e., it's still basically an ERM where the 1st stage is completely dropped off, and then a "counter missile size impeller" provides a sprint mode at the end, giving it extra range. The Mk16 is a much "bitchier" proposition from start to finish: up to 25% of any missile salvo are the Dazzlers and Dragons Teeth penetration aids, the full extended range -- and I don't think we've even seen someone use Mark 16's the ballistic phase yet: the Battle of Manticore's ballistic missiles were MDMs.

The battle of Spindle was at the stated and known DDM range of 30MM km, using cruisers designed without Keyhole II, specifically to hide the range of the Mark 23 which is nearly double that even without a ballistic phase.

I'd assume that at some point that an RMN captain is going to have to use that range and the hitting power of the Mod-G warhead in order to protect a "must defend" target.

Most of what you said is right on, although from what I have understood from my reading of the books the Dazzler and Dragon's Teeth systems are dedicated ECM missiles. The Mark 16 has been used with a ballistic phase, but not against the Sollies. It was used against the RHN at Solon.

At All Costs, Chapter 37 wrote:"Engage Bogey One!" Honor snapped.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Jaruwalski responded. "Should I use the Agamemnons, too?"
"Yes," Honor replied. "Gamma sequence."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Jaruwalski repeated, and began issuing orders over the task force's tactical net.
Given the geometry—the effective closing speed between TF 82 and the launch platforms was almost thirty-six thousand KPS—the battlecruisers' Mark 16 MDMs, with one less "stage" than Imperator's larger missiles, had a maximum powered range of forty-two million kilometers. But the range was over fifty-three million, which meant the Mark 16s would have to coast ballistically for eleven million kilometers between stage activations. That would add an additional minute and a half to their flight time, bringing it to a total of thirteen and a half minutes, whereas Imperator's more powerful missiles could make the entire run under power, in only seven. Moreover, the smaller missiles' closing speed relative to their targets would be over twenty thousand KPS lower.
But by using the gamma sequence she and Jaruwalski had worked out months ago, Imperator would roll her first half dozen patterns with missile settings which duplicated those of the Mark 16s. The Agamemnons would roll six patterns each at the same rate, which would take seventy-two seconds, and those six salvos—each of two hundred and seventy-six missiles—would make the crossing at the Mark 16s' speed.
Only after the smaller MDMs were away would Imperator begin firing full-power patterns of her own, one double pattern every twenty-four seconds. The first of her 120-strong salvos would arrive on target eight and a half minutes after she first began rolling pods, five minutes before the battlecruisers' fire.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.