Weird Harold wrote:Why duplicate the anti-LAC mode of a MK-9 Viper -- with added complications?
The Viper has an X-Ray Laser warhead -- which is NOT used in anti-missile mode because the firing solution is too complex at missile closing speeds -- which has a longer range and is more powerful than a PDLC. If you could sove the firing solution complexity, which you would also need to do for your idea, it would be better to just load your canister with enhanced-Vipers.
From David's post on the Bar:
Your "gunslinger" notion, unfortunately, would appear to me to depend upon an ability to engage multiple, widely separated targets with pinpoint precision which exceeds the abilities of current-generation (and foreseeable-generation) laser heads. The laser heads of a single missile do not target separate ships; while they theoretically could, assuming the proper geometry for the ships in question, they are actually designed to hit a single target with a cascade of bomb-pump lasers. And since the missile normally carries only a single nuclear device to pump all the laser heads, all of the lasers are generated simultaneously (or effectively so) which tends to further limit the flexibility of the system. Even if that weren't the case, you are assuming far too great a capability on the part of the missiles' sensors to find and kill incoming missiles. Shipkiller vessels are designed to kill ships, not missiles, and they would not work well at all (as in not work at all) against missiles.
***
Okay, don't absolutely hold me to this, because I'm tired and I'm not sure how well my brain is working. However, walk with me here.
A laser head missile carries a single nuclear charge. It carries multiple independently targeted lasing rods, with their own thruster and attitude systems, which is what people in the Honorverse are talking about when they use the term "laser head" and which are carried in a single bus, from which they are dispensed when the missile attacks.
Although they are technically "independently targeted" (since they are independently deployed weapons), they are not really intended to engage more than one target per attack missile. The laser heads deploy from the bus with their target(s) already assigned and use the main missile's onboard sensors to align themselves with their targets. Theoretically, a single laser head missile could engage multiple targets simultaneously. To do that, however, the multiple targets in question would all have to lie within the field of fire of a laser head located the proper distance "ahead" of the nuclear charge when it detonates. To complicate matters further, laser heads do not have a spherical detonation front to work with. The missile incorporates a collar of focusing gravity generators which effectively "shape" the detonation's front, concentrating a much greater percentage of the detonation's total energy on the lasing rods of the laser heads. This means their firing point is even more restricted, and it also makes it even more unlikely that they will be able to obtain shots at multiple targets which are not obstructed by an impeller wedge somewhere along the line.
Now, as I understand your proposal, you are talking about targeting these laser rods on individual missiles traveling under acceleration towards their targets. This is a much smaller and much more difficult target than a starship. It can pull a far higher acceleration in a maneuver, it's smaller, and it is far more likely to alter course, interposing its own wedge, at an inconvenient moment. If the missile you're trying to kill is coming straight down the throat of your MDM (or any other capital ship missile), you might be able to pull this off. Generally speaking, however, for a missile to be headed straight towards one of your launch platforms, it's going to be in the terminal phase of its attack run, and you'd have a far better chance of achieving a kill with a standard counter missile than with something like this. In order to attack a missile that isn't headed straight down your throat, you'd have to position your MDM in front of it, presumably with the ability of the MDM's onboard sensors to see the target (that is, it would have to be visible through the open front of the MDM's own wedge) and generate a firing angle into the target missile's wedge at the same moment. I'm not going to say this is flatly impossible, but it's certainly not going to be a trivial accomplishment. Moreover, if the other side has Apollo, then assuming that you've managed to pull this off once or twice, the op force is going to be watching for maneuvers precisely like this one, and all of those shipboard computers that are linked in through the control missile are going to have plenty of free capacity to recognize missile flight profiles designed to do this -- or, for that matter, to routinely steer around anything that looks like it might be positioned to do this. I strongly suspect that what would happen would be the "triple ripple" all over again -- an effective defense the first time or two you managed to arrange for it, but not particularly difficult to neutralize/avoid after the other side's ops officers have had a good look at it.
It's also true that the position of an attack missile is not usually as firmly fixed within its wedge as you appear to be thinking. Remember that attack missiles can actually be set for variable acceleration rates. They don't have to be launched at exactly half power, for example, to triple endurance. The drive can be set for any acceleration value between zero and its maximum obtainable acceleration rate. Certain standard settings tend to get used a lot for two reasons. First, because there's no particular point in finely finagling acceleration rates to obtain a given maximum range. Second, because if the acceleration rates aren't maxed out, the missile can be located at a different point within the impeller wedge, exactly the same way a starship can. This no appreciable effect on standard counter missiles (one reason that standard counter missiles are "standard" counter missiles), which depend on wedge-on-wedge kills, but it can make tracking more difficult for the fire control assigned to the point defense clusters during the missile's final powered run in on the target.
All of this, taken together, is the reason that I think it would be very difficult to use a shipkiller as a counter missile. Obviously, it wouldn't be flatly impossible, but I strongly suspect that you'd have better luck trying to use the missile wedge than attempting to physically target the incoming missile body with laser heads. Even there, though, you need to bear in mind that whereas counter missiles have insanely powerful and deliberately huge impeller wedges, the designers of shipkiller missiles put a lot of thought into making their weapons' impeller wedges as small as possible, expressly to make the counter missile's job harder. That means that a shipkiller, by its very nature, makes not only a lower but a less efficient "missile sweeper" when used in the missile-defense role.
