SharkHunter wrote:One of the things I have realized much more clearly during the course of this thread is that there's got to be a "control links times salvo" relationship going on, otherwise a ship could only fire X missiles every few minutes. That makes the "update the missiles" speed of the ACM the true force multiplier at the level described -- forcing Theisman to go for it a la the Battle of Manticore or have "all be lost".
Keeping with this thread's starting topic, "rotating" links at 3:1 or letting the Apollo simply dupliate the same targeting instructions to multiple missiles a la Barnett still seems like it would be about 20x more effective than light speed links at anything significantly shorter than maximum range, because the final update could still be much further downrange.
So I come back to the questio of "do the uber geeks find a way to update the Mark-16's to slave to an Apollo or not?"
I still say yes. That would make any RMN ship plus a Mycroft and an ammo supply a "fleet of one", for most battles.
Yes/no?
On the question of the number of control links,... If I were building the ships,... I would traditionally have had at least twice the number of control links per broadside as the number of missile launchers on that side. My thinking is that the missiles are launched with basic attack information such as "enemy is here", and "look for this ship signature" kind of thing. However, the closer my missile got to the desired target I would want to update the info to the missile and I would want to do those updates to the missiles that were in final attack mode and the next flight of missiles immediately following the attacking ones. I would only ever need control of the attacking missile and the salvo following it, the rest I would consider as simply ferrying themselves to the general area of the battle ground. I would take control of each salvo as they approached the target. I could have 20 salvos of missiles in flight but only have direct control of the 2 closest to the targets.
The 3:1 thing you are talking about is only possible if your are augmenting ship's broadsides with missile pods so that you have 3 times the number of missiles in a single salvo than control links. In the old "traditional" ship, as I understand it, the control links would have been attached to the physical side of the ship. This would have required the launching ship to point it's sidewall more or less directly toward the ship it was firing at. This same orientation was also necessary to see the incoming missiles so that counter missiles could be launched. With at least keyhole-two these links are no longer on the physical side of the ship (not all of them any way) the links to the missiles are done via a drone outside of the signal "blocking" effect of the wedge. This allows the Nike class to keep it's wedge to the enemy for the duration of the battle. This makes the ship a harder target to hit and maintains a link to your missiles no matter what orientation you my maneuver the ship in it's defense. And these Keyhole-two drones have a great number of missile control links which is augmented with the Apollo 1:8 control ratio. So for most large wall to wall battles in the future it would be difficult to have more missiles in flight than available control links. But I guess, in the right conditions it's still possible. Then again, in a wall against wall situation I wouldn't be using Mk16s I would be using Mk23s for their extra punch against the armor. So whether or not if it was possible, which anything is possible, I don't think it probable that they would make the adaptation. The Mk16 is a great intermediate missile with appropriate intermediate capabilities.
So my answer is NO they are not going to do it, not that they couldn't do it.
