Proximity kills of incoming missiles via dirty nukes?

No, I'm talking about the BC that exploded for a yield I vaguely remember as 75,000,000 gigatons based on the damage done. I could look up he thread, but it isn't worth it.

The problem with trying to bring extra mass is that space is big. So unless you bring a few billion tons to wrap around your nuke you are still dealing with a really good vacuum, which transmits blast not at all. And if you can carry and fire billion ton missiles at me I'll just surrender now.

Weird Harold wrote:Early in the series, RMN ships apparently did stock some missiles without Laser heads for warning shots, but I should think that pod-based combat would make that unfeasible.

The first Laser head was developed ~1870PD and the RMN spent the next 25 years or so refining the Laser head and adapting it for use in existing ships. In "In Fire Forged", is a treatice on the Mk 13 - the first RMN Cruiser weight laserhead missile, introduced in ~1880 iirc. It, like the Mk 19 Capitol Laserhead missile, added the Laserhead option to the "Boom" and "Burn" settings of the classic contact nuke.

In OBS (~1900) We see the old Fearless CL with Mk 50 missiles. The Mk 50 missile was so small, the RMN could not engineer all 3 in 1 package, so the Courageous CLs (and their design consort Noblesse destroyer) alone carried a mix of Laserheads and contact nukes until they could be retired. Newer designs used a new DD/CL class missile which combined all 3 settings like their larger brethern.

Hi KZT,

The largest warhead we've seen in the series is the 500 megaton contact nuke Mistletoe [not a laserhead] in AAC [nine years ago for us, just over a year ago in the Honorverse at Lovat, circa May 15, 1921 PD].

I've speculated about turning it into a laserhead, possibly to get some amazing standoff ranges [if a megaton range laserhead has a standoff range of 30,0000 km, what does a 500 MT laserhead have?] but gigaton warheads seem a stretch for a while, though RFC may have them show up with the MAlign.

If a gigaton bomb means 50 metric tons and a sphere of 35 cubic meters [just over 4m in diameter], then a 500MT warhead would be 17.5 m^3 or 3.22 m in diameter.

While 25 metric tons is 30% of HMS Hexapuma's 84 ton RD, it seems possible by switching out the various recon sensor packages such a warhead could be carried.

For me half that seems more reasonable, so if after 2000 more years of nuclear research the various improvements mean a ratio of 40 not 20 to 1, the mass for a 500MT bomb might be just 12.5 tons and a diameter of 2.5566m.

While the Mistletoe's were launched by the scout DD's, we don't know how many can be carried by the old DD's or any warships, and since the RMN launches them out of the boat bays rather than dedicated launch tubes which might trigger unwanted curious questions due to their size etc, NTM the costs of modifications and improvements during refits.

Regarding the 25,000 ton Cimeterre LAC [25% larger than the RMN's], can we expect more than 20 missiles and 56 for the Shrike/Alpha and Ferret/ Beta equivalent versions?

The RHN LAC missiles may mass 10-20 tons more than the 70-78 ton RMN LAC missiles, but I doubt their LAC's carry more.

L


[quote="kzt"][quote="MaxxQ"]
If you really want to try playing Russian Roulette, you could try to time your defensive launch to detonate after the laserhead shrouds are jettisoned, and the laserheads are moving forward of the rest of the missile to attack position. However, that entire sequence only takes, at most, a few seconds. The timing on that would have to be incredibly precise. And again, that goes back to my second paragraph, where you have to worry about covering a sphere with a 50k km radius.[/quote]
You don't have to hit a 50,000 km radius. At the few seconds when the laserheads are in TA mode you know that the optics are staring at the target, so the target would be setting off a really, really bright flash when someone is looking directly at it with powerful optics. It's pretty much exactly like looking directly into the sun with a big telescope.

Oh, and it should also be pointed out that high yield nukes are big. Currently 6kt/kg is pretty much the wall for modern designs and only reachable for megaton range bombs. There were apparently some vague design studies in the early 1960s for monster bombs that were expected to hit 11kt/kg, but then the utility of big bombs was no longer there, so they were never built.

If we assume a factor of 20 for honorverse bombs, that means a gigaton bomb (1,000,000 KT) masses 50,000 kg. And it's probably mostly 50,000 kg of lithium hydride, which is less dense than water. Or maybe Lithium Hydroxide, which is denser. This suggests a minimum warhead size of 35 cubic meters. (assuming you don't clad it in something to make it "dirty nuke"...) So how big are these missiles and how many can fit in a Cimmeterre magazine?

[/quote]