Future Point Defense Options

Weird Harold wrote:The intercept solution would be a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the intercept solution for a LAC -- even without the need for aiming a warhead.

People keep saying this, but the sidewinder missiles that could perform supersonic direct hit intercepts in the 1950s did this without integrated circuits, much less high performance computers. Continually producing a collision course just isn't that hard.

Weird Harold wrote:

Duckk wrote: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.

You misread my post. I was disparaging sharkhunter's idea of putting scaled down PDLCs on fusion-powered CMs.

I explicitly noted that Vipers DO NOT use their anti-LAC warheads against missiles; not even single missiles, let alone multiple missiles.

captinjoehenry wrote:Now looking at the 3D render made by MaxxQBuNine of the MK.9 missile if you were to remove the lasing rod and nuke you would free up a huge amount of space which you could cram full of a large amount of additional sensors and computers which should be more than capable of what I am suggesting if the MK.9 is already a fire and forget weapon against LACs

The idea of building on the Viper's fire-and-forget ability has been raised multiple times. The objections seem to center around the closing speeds of missile+counter missile; the time for computations during the final attack phase is smaller than even the most capable AI can handle, let alone one that can be crammed into a counter missile.

The intercept solution would be a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the intercept solution for a LAC -- even without the need for aiming a warhead.

Ok the terminal guidance can actually be pretty simple technically if the missile can generate a lock on target it does not really need to compute any sort of firing solution all it needs to do is use proportional navigation (http://www.moddb.com/mods/wicmw/feature ... principles) so even if the attack missile is preforming a large amount of evvasive manuvers for final guidence you can use this proportional guidence which in truth needs no real computing power. Read the article I link for all of the details because I am not able to summarize this subject very well. Now the missile can use this guidance system for most of the flight depending on the extent that the attack missile maneuvers as this navigation system should be fully functional if the attack missile does not do large changes in its approach vector.

Also there is a HUGE amount of volume that removing the war head and lasing rod from the MK.9 frees up I mean if the MK.9 is able to generate firing solutions on LACs with whatever space it has for sensors if you were to remove the lasing rod and war head you would easily have 10x as much space at a very low estimate so if you were to fill up all of that space with computers i am pretty sure it would be able to generate the firing solution it needs to hit the attack missile

MK.9 Viper cut away (http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/M ... -465723662)
MK.9 Viper without capacitors (http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/M ... -465723786)
MK.9 Viper with cover (http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -465722583)

captinjoehenry wrote:What I am talking about when I mention the MK.9 Viper is its ability to be a fire and forget weapon I think I have actually said this but what I am suggesting is that you take a MK.9 Viper you remove its laser head and its nuclear warhead and you fill the space which this frees up with additional computer and targeting sensors so that this new missile lets call it MK.10 is a high performance fire and forget counter missile which will kill attacking missiles with its wedge.
If you do this then you no longer need to provide constant guidance to the CM because the MK.10 would be able to guide itself onto the attacking missile using its onboard sensors and ai. For longer range engagements the launching ship would only need to provide mid course updates because the MK.10 would be able to guide itself onto the attack missile once the MK.10s sensors can see the target.

As you kind of alluded to the Viper is fire and forget when launched at 3.5 million km or less against LAC sized targets with (presumably) 100+ km wide wedges, and accelerations of < 1000g.

A closing MDM target has a <10 wide wedge, and get launched at when its more like 20 million km away, and accelerating at 46000g.
(To be fair though, for simplicity, I ran those numbers as if the LAC was itself the target for a max range MDM. If it is 2-4 million km downrange, and/or the MDM is launched from less than its max powered range, then the MDM won't be going quite as fast and you won't have to launch quite as early to intercept it out near Viper burnout)


The LAC has way less ability to dodge, and is a physically larger and much closer target to track. There's no guarantee that a viper is noticeably better at fire-and-forget against incoming MDMs than any other CM.

kzt wrote:People keep saying this, but the sidewinder missiles ...

Sidewinders never had to deal with relativistic, C-fractional closing velocities.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:People keep saying this, but the sidewinder missiles ...

Sidewinders never had to deal with relativistic, C-fractional closing velocities.

They also didn't have FTL sensors. They just don't get going that fast, and the minor time dilation problems are all on the fast moving side, which are the MDMs that are trying to avoid the collision.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:People keep saying this, but the sidewinder missiles ...

Sidewinders never had to deal with relativistic, C-fractional closing velocities.

while that is true the method is still exactly the same and if you have fast enough computers you would be able to do it easily and if a CM could not self guide itself in final approach and your command loop is even one whole second at final engagement range I believe there is about 0 chance in hell that a CM which is unable to guide itself in final approach will ever hit anything simply due to the length of time for the command loop.

Jonathan_S wrote:

captinjoehenry wrote:What I am talking about when I mention the MK.9 Viper is its ability to be a fire and forget weapon I think I have actually said this but what I am suggesting is that you take a MK.9 Viper you remove its laser head and its nuclear warhead and you fill the space which this frees up with additional computer and targeting sensors so that this new missile lets call it MK.10 is a high performance fire and forget counter missile which will kill attacking missiles with its wedge.
If you do this then you no longer need to provide constant guidance to the CM because the MK.10 would be able to guide itself onto the attacking missile using its onboard sensors and ai. For longer range engagements the launching ship would only need to provide mid course updates because the MK.10 would be able to guide itself onto the attack missile once the MK.10s sensors can see the target.

As you kind of alluded to the Viper is fire and forget when launched at 3.5 million km or less against LAC sized targets with (presumably) 100+ km wide wedges, and accelerations of < 1000g.

A closing MDM target has a <10 wide wedge, and get launched at when its more like 20 million km away, and accelerating at 46000g.
(To be fair though, for simplicity, I ran those numbers as if the LAC was itself the target for a max range MDM. If it is 2-4 million km downrange, and/or the MDM is launched from less than its max powered range, then the MDM won't be going quite as fast and you won't have to launch quite as early to intercept it out near Viper burnout)


The LAC has way less ability to dodge, and is a physically larger and much closer target to track. There's no guarantee that a viper is noticeably better at fire-and-forget against incoming MDMs than any other CM.

What I am talking about is just using the chassis of the MK.9 Viper but cram it to the gunwales with sensors and computers that are designed from the ground up to guide a CM into a attack missile

Computers aren't the problem. Even if you have the volume to house more sensors, it seems reasonable that a small missile body won't have nearly the same sensor baseline that a warship can have.

Countermissiles hand themselves off for the final intercept (there's a point when they're too far from their controller to receive and act on updates before the impact), though presumably there's a certain amount of lateral jinking that missiles can engage in to try to generate a miss, but it's limited.

The first big problem is getting the countermissile to the point where its own sensors can pick up its target.

The second is launching enough countermissiles fast enough that you can roughly match incoming missile numbers so your PDLCs have a shot at taking out missiles. The big problem here with MDMs is that have a huge range over which to build velocity, so they cross the intercept zones so fast that you only have time for one countermissile per incoming missile, and only one PDLC shot per emitter. And since the MDMs can be launched in several waves but stacked to come in as a single huge wave converging on its target in fractions of a second, you're going to need a LOT of CMs, meaning either a LOT of CM launchers since you'll only get one launch per wave, or else much longer-ranged CMs. Which will probably be bigger, meaning you can carry fewer of them.

tonyz wrote:Computers aren't the problem. Even if you have the volume to house more sensors, it seems reasonable that a small missile body won't have nearly the same sensor baseline that a warship can have.

Countermissiles hand themselves off for the final intercept (there's a point when they're too far from their controller to receive and act on updates before the impact), though presumably there's a certain amount of lateral jinking that missiles can engage in to try to generate a miss, but it's limited.

The first big problem is getting the countermissile to the point where its own sensors can pick up its target.

The second is launching enough countermissiles fast enough that you can roughly match incoming missile numbers so your PDLCs have a shot at taking out missiles. The big problem here with MDMs is that have a huge range over which to build velocity, so they cross the intercept zones so fast that you only have time for one countermissile per incoming missile, and only one PDLC shot per emitter. And since the MDMs can be launched in several waves but stacked to come in as a single huge wave converging on its target in fractions of a second, you're going to need a LOT of CMs, meaning either a LOT of CM launchers since you'll only get one launch per wave, or else much longer-ranged CMs. Which will probably be bigger, meaning you can carry fewer of them.

The reason I am proposing the increase in the ability for CM to be fire and forget weapons is according to RFC the major limiting factor to amount of CM that can be launched is fire control as current ships have anywhere from 25% - 50% more CM launchers then they can control so if you can make the CM be able to guide themselves or just reduce the amount of fire control each CM needs you would be able to fire more CM then you could before and you would be able to extend the range at which the CM can engage the attack missiles as they would be less dependent on ship based guidance so they should be more accurate at longer range.

Now one major way you could use all of that internal space would be to mount flip out sensors if you there is enough time of course so if CM use a LIDAR or radar you could have deployable radar or LIDAR arrays as in space there is no drag so there is no real reason why you could not mount flip out LIDAR or radar sensors now if it use grav sensors i would assume you could still mount flip out grav sensors so that would increase the sensors available to the CM after launch.

Also even if you are not able to mount flip out sensors you could still use the additional computer power to refine the data it can get from whatever sensors the CM is able to carry.

SharkHunter wrote:oh, duh. CM's aren't fusion drive missiles. Still, given that they have to collide with an attack missile to succeed, and that ships CAN 'fire canister CM's' as a last resort out of a full size tube, couldn't the canister missile be a micro-fusion driven "mini-linear PDLC", that is fusion reactor driven, and if it gets within 100-500 km of an attack missile fires of a set of shots then blow the reactor like a warhead? That seems as doable as a full up attack missile having a stand off range of 30,000 km and at least as doable than the 10km wedge collision.

Canisters are not missiles. They are literally just canisters, which pop open to release counter missiles once they get far away from the ship. Canisters do not have any missile drive.

Jonathan_S wrote:We know that the Mk23's weren't fitted with FTL receivers; we don't actually know that they couldn't be.

Yes, we do know they couldn't be. Mk23 attack missiles are not big enough for FTL comm. That's why the Apollo Command Missile had to be twice the diameter of the attack missiles.