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Impeller wedge against ground target

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Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by aairfccha   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:42 pm

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In CoG, a megaton yield kinetic strike is used to destroy a tower on Mesa, with considerable damage in the vicinity and underground. Couldn't this have been accomplished more precise using a pinnace or reconnaissance drone with active impeller wedge at zero thrust and hovering on countergrav or with thrusters?

Even if this also sends debris flying around, underground damage should be greatly reduced. Of course, suddenly losing altitude would be quite disastrous. :?
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by MaxxQ   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:55 pm

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aairfccha wrote:In CoG, a megaton yield kinetic strike is used to destroy a tower on Mesa, with considerable damage in the vicinity and underground. Couldn't this have been accomplished more precise using a pinnace or reconnaissance drone with active impeller wedge at zero thrust and hovering on countergrav or with thrusters?

Even if this also sends debris flying around, underground damage should be greatly reduced. Of course, suddenly losing altitude would be quite disastrous. :?


You do realize that even a pinnace wedge size is measured in kilometers, right?
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:07 pm

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MaxxQ wrote:
aairfccha wrote:In CoG, a megaton yield kinetic strike is used to destroy a tower on Mesa, with considerable damage in the vicinity and underground. Couldn't this have been accomplished more precise using a pinnace or reconnaissance drone with active impeller wedge at zero thrust and hovering on countergrav or with thrusters?

Even if this also sends debris flying around, underground damage should be greatly reduced. Of course, suddenly losing altitude would be quite disastrous. :?


You do realize that even a pinnace wedge size is measured in kilometers, right?
And the relativistic spray of matter thrown off by it hitting the insanely high grav field of the wedge probably doesn't do great things for the surrounding area.

Pinnaces don't even appear to use their wedge in the upper atmosphere; relying on counter grav and air-breathing turbines or rockets. (Though we've seen far, far, smaller wedges on SAMs used endoatmospheric)
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by Weird Harold   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:27 pm

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aairfccha wrote:In CoG, a megaton yield kinetic strike is used to destroy a tower on Mesa, with considerable damage in the vicinity and underground. Couldn't this have been accomplished more precise using a pinnace or reconnaissance drone with active impeller wedge at zero thrust and hovering on countergrav or with thrusters?


It could have been accomplished more precisely simply by programming the KEW differently -- at least if Mesan KEWs are comparable to the Manticoran system used in Shadow of Freedom.

It wasn't that a megaton yield was required, but that it was desired, including the "considerable damage in the vicinity and underground."
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by kzt   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 6:29 pm

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The AT and AA warheads discussed previously in books use wedges. They would be highly suited for dealing with these kind of structures, but you'd need more than a few.
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by jtg452   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 10:37 pm

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kzt wrote:The AT and AA warheads discussed previously in books use wedges. They would be highly suited for dealing with these kind of structures, but you'd need more than a few.

I always assumed that they used the wedges to accelerate and just let the kinetic energy of that sort of speed to do the damage on the KEW weapons. The actual projectile might be made of something that was tough enough not to turn to plasma from friction in the atmosphere at those kinds of speeds but I don't see where you'd need anything as fancy as a live wedge in an atmosphere to do the level of damage RFC writes about.

You really don't need to do anything else if you start throwing serious weights at those kinds of speeds. The energy transfer to the target when the projectile is going fast enough for it to be best to measure the velocity in fractions of the speed of light is going to be bad enough.

The most dangerous orbital bombardment weapon in any of RFC's universes is basically rolling a really big rock down a gravity well. If you don't have really big rocks, just something much smaller, then you roll it much faster to make up for the lack of mass.
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by JohnRoth   » Tue Jun 17, 2014 11:43 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
aairfccha wrote:In CoG, a megaton yield kinetic strike is used to destroy a tower on Mesa, with considerable damage in the vicinity and underground. Couldn't this have been accomplished more precise using a pinnace or reconnaissance drone with active impeller wedge at zero thrust and hovering on countergrav or with thrusters?


It could have been accomplished more precisely simply by programming the KEW differently -- at least if Mesan KEWs are comparable to the Manticoran system used in Shadow of Freedom.

It wasn't that a megaton yield was required, but that it was desired, including the "considerable damage in the vicinity and underground."


If I understand it correctly, the collateral damage wasn't desired. The yield was set by an incompetent general at the direction of a bunch of politicians with their heads up their {redacted}. The collateral damage is what kept those same politicians from authorizing KEW strikes on the other tower for several weeks.
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by Weird Harold   » Wed Jun 18, 2014 12:24 am

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jtg452 wrote:I always assumed that they used the wedges to accelerate and just let the kinetic energy of that sort of speed to do the damage on the KEW weapons.


Both instances in textev of "Manpad" Anti-Air missiles being used include graphic descriptions of the damage caused by the missile's wedge. Those missiles were NOT KEWs, they used their wedges as warheads.

Orbital Bombardment KEWs do use a wedge to accelerate the KEW to a precise velocity to provide the desired yield and let the velocity and mass do the damage.

Shadow of Freedom
Chapter Thirty-One
wrote:
The Mark 87 “Damocles” Kinetic Strike Package was a containerized weapon system designed to fit into any standard shipboard magazine and sized to deploy through a counter-missile launch tube. The KSP could be configured with several different types of payloads, but the most common variant—like the one which had been deployed from Quentin Saint-James number three CM tube shortly after she’d entered orbit—carried a rack of six of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps’ M412 kinetic penetrators. Each penetrator was a six hundred and fifty kilogram dart fitted with its own small, short-lived but powerful impeller drive, a capacitor ring for onboard power, and a guidance package. By controlling acceleration rates and times, the M412 could produce an effective yield of up to one megaton…but this particular application called for a slightly smaller sledgehammer than that.

The projectile impacted at barely one tenth of a percent of light speed. The tower was enormous, the projectile wasn’t all that huge, and its velocity might seem positively snail-like compared to the eighty percent of light speed a Mark 23 could attain, but it was sufficient. In fact, its produced an effective yield of just over sixty-seven kilotons as it struck dead center on the tower’s roof at an angle of exactly ninety degrees and punched straight down, pithing it with a spike of plasma that vaporized everything in its path.
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by aairfccha   » Wed Jun 18, 2014 2:38 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
MaxxQ wrote:You do realize that even a pinnace wedge size is measured in kilometers, right?
And the relativistic spray of matter thrown off by it hitting the insanely high grav field of the wedge probably doesn't do great things for the surrounding area.
The tower did not sound like a small target either and to match the collateral damage of several megatons you have to throw quite a bit of stuff around. Also within limits, wedge strength and size might be adjustable.

Though we've seen far, far, smaller wedges on SAMs used endoatmospheric
An impeller driven missile grazing the tower (going upwards of course) or flying down a corridor should mess it up good as well.
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Re: Impeller wedge against ground target
Post by aairfccha   » Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:01 pm

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jtg452 wrote:You really don't need to do anything else if you start throwing serious weights at those kinds of speeds. The energy transfer to the target when the projectile is going fast enough for it to be best to measure the velocity in fractions of the speed of light is going to be bad enough.


That's not the point. Sufficiently fast kinetic weapons have all the power you need to destroy anything but they always release their energy in the same way and if you want to accomplish something specific, they might not be the best option.
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