OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

cthia wrote:But I am asking how, exactly is that accomplished? Do the missiles incorporate some sort of highly sensitive gimbal that interfaces with the computer which measures time and acceleration to figure position?

I don't see any reason why it couldn't be accomplished. There's no reason for Chin's fleet to have doubted that Honor was going to hit them. Changing positions after a missile goes ballistic is useless. The question was only how accurate those guesses would be when it came to hitting the ships they were aiming for, instead of hitting any wedge in the wrong proportions.

Let's flay the entire process open and dissect it for a better understanding.

The ships roll pods. The entire gang of pods have to be oriented to the correct bearing, and this orientation has to be performed right up to the moment they are fired since the targets are maneuvering. The ship itself has sensors which have the ability to detect an enemy wedge and then CIC can ascertain range and heading and acceleration. But a missile does not have that level of capability in its onboard sensors.

Why does the pod have to be oriented in any way? With dumb SDMs that can't turn around... maybe. But RMN and GSN ships have been able to fire off-bore for several years now and within a 30° arc or so for over a decade. In fact, the inability to orient was a regression from Travis' times, when the missiles were spit out in front of the ship on rockets before lighting up their wedges, which is when they'd begin their rapid acceleration downrange. But sure, let's say the pods are roughly oriented in the direction of the target... as in "the right quadrant of the sky."

The target ships are manoeuvring, so the detailed targetting to tell a missile "hit this ship" is something only the mothership could provide. But the target grouping of ships, over 10 million km away, isn't going out of angle in any hurry. Even if those ships are moving perpendicularly at 20,000 km/s (81 minutes of acceleration at SLN BC levels), from 10 million km away their angular motion is 0.115°/s or 6.9 arc-minutes/s. I'm going to say the rough tumble of the pod discarding itself makes for more lateral motion than this. So there's no way the missile can miss the grouping of targets.

And missiles have gravitic sensors. Not as refined as the ship, but once told that "this is the set of wedges you're going after," they will start after it and continue after it. They could get confused, for example by those targets passing behind or in front of another group of wedges -- like in basketball when the player with the ball passes behind a teammate who in turn blocks the adversary whose job was to stand in front of the first player. But the chance of this happening in the 4 to 20 minutes of the missiles' flight time is very low.

Even in the age of SDMs missiles had to be led to their targets until they were close enough to begin tracking themselves.

So, I ask again. What possible breakthrough did I miss where it says that missiles can exit the ship knowing where they are in space?

Nothing. They've always been programmed in the tubes to know where they're going. The problem has never been figuring out the rough location of the target ship.

It had been:

(1) losing track of which ship in the target grouping the missile was supposed to strike. In a fleet formation, those ships are performing a dance of going around each other, bringing their wedges up and down in power, and just general EW, in such a way that the missile could get confused between the high-value SD and a low-value DD.

(2) being fooled by decoys. We haven't seen this from the SLN, but we know Lorelei exists now. But that's also a reaction to more capable missiles, so in an age were missiles were more myopic, launching an RD-like vessel with an oversized and overpowered wedge could fool the missile into going after the wrong target.

(3) inability to accurately penetrate the target's defences, especially their EW. The enemy is constantly changing their EW based on past engagements (if they're not stupid). Therefore, adjusting which EW techniques and penaids worked in previous waves is incredibly useful. This was the most difficult problem to solve because of the light-lag in non-FTL sensors, not to mention the lower resolution of shipboard sensors that are tens of millions of km away (RDs help, though).

(4) inability to rebalance the targetting on the fly. Because of all the previous issues, missiles would lose track of which ship they were supposed to hit. That's why CIC had to keep telling them, "no, go after this wedge, forget that one." But it gets worse since there are multiple missiles in flight and they would conceivably all be making the same decisions, thus they could all swarm a single target and overkill it, but leave other targets only lightly-attacked. This is what the ACM solves.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This is what the ACM solves.

ACM = Apollo Command Missile. Which not only has increased computing power to solve interception problems, but also improved sensors and the ability to share data with the other 23E missiles to further enhance the capabilities of the missile volley.

PS: I said 23E, rather than 23F, because I thought that I read the missiles fired at Beowulf were not actually the system defense variety; but the standard Mark-23 model. However I cannot find where I might have seen that statement. If I am correct, I assume this happens because Beowulf was concentrating on the variety needed by ships and then this episode is even more remarkable.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
(2) being fooled by decoys. We haven't seen this from the SLN, but we know Lorelei exists now. But that's also a reaction to more capable missiles, so in an age were missiles were more myopic, launching an RD-like vessel with an oversized and overpowered wedge could fool the missile into going after the wrong target.

And long before Lorelie, all the way back in OBS, we saw ships deploy tethered decoy to try to lure missiles into shooting them up instead of the ship itself

On Basilisk Station wrote:two fifty-ton decoys snapped out of their broadside bays, popping through specially opened portals in Fearless's sidewalls. Tractors moored them to the cruiser, holding the driveless lures on station to cover her flanks

And of course we've seen them used in other situations:
Like pretending to be SDs as the final bluff in 4th Yeltsin - giving Theisman the cover he needed with his people's commissioner to retreat and avoid being the target of Honor's 2nd death ride of the day.
Or Wayfarer using to to pretend to be the liner Artimis while the actual damaged liner slipped away.

And then there were the improved (but still apparently inferior to Lorelei) Ghost Rider decoys we saw just before Buttercup.

Ashes of Victory wrote:BatDiv 62's internal launchers were busy firing something besides shipkillers. They were firing more electronic warfare drones that took station on the formation and began to thresh the Peeps' targeting systems with jamming, and others that took on the appearance of more superdreadnoughts, more battlecruisers, more heavy cruisers, all beckoning to the Peep's sensors.
Such decoys had always been available, but only in limited numbers. The power required to sustain a convincing false sensor image of a warship in engagement range was so high that a drone required direct power transmission from the ship it was protecting. That meant standard practice had always been to deploy decoys only on tractors and in low numbers. But the same technology which had provided the power plants for the RMN's FTL recon drones had been brought to bear on the decoy problem by the R&D types responsible for Project Ghost Rider, and the result—one of the results—was a completely independent unit with an endurance of up to twenty minutes from internal power alone, depending on the strength of the sensor image it had to duplicate. And one that could be fired from one of the new capital missile tubes, at that.

And the SLN BC did deploy decoys -- which I believe are part of their Halo platforms ECM/Jammer upgrade

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Counter-missiles slid into launchers, laser clusters trained out on the threat axis, decoys spun up, and ECM went active. The faces on Québec’s flag bridge were tight, tension and fear burred in the staff officers’ voices, but there was no panic, and Capriotti’s fists clenched on the armrests of his command couch. His estimate had been almost perfect, but at least their attack was going to go in two minutes before the Manty MDMs swarmed TF 790.

Apollo just saw through them

Still, these would be old-style towed decoys, relying on beamed power from the ship, which must limit how far away you can deploy them. (So these are presumably more trying to confuse the missiles about which of several nearby targets is the real ship and less adding entire fake ships to the formation, or entire fake formations of ships to the fleet -- which is what the Ghost Rider and Lorelei free-flying decoys let the RMN do)

Also, while searching UH to see if the SLN BC's deployed decoys against the autonomous Apollo strike I found this wonderful passage explaining the issues we've been discussing here. And it ties in beautifully with ThinksMarkedly's list from a couple posts back.
I'd totally forgotten about this text!

Uncompromising Honor wrote:In theory, it ought to have been simple for any missile to find something as glaringly obvious as an impeller-drive starship under power. In practice, things were a bit more complicated. It wasn’t that missiles operating in autonomous mode couldn’t find targets; it was just that they had a great deal of trouble finding—and hitting—the right targets.
True, seeing the impeller signature of a target really was technological child’s play in many ways. Unfortunately, impeller-drive starships were extremely maneuverable, their wedges sharply limited the vulnerable aspects from which they could be successfully attacked, and they mounted both active and passive defenses designed to make the task of any attack missile’s seekers as un-simple as possible.
Given the way in which a missile’s own impeller wedge narrowed its onboard seekers’ field of view (one RMN training manual likened it to steering an air car while looking at the outside world through a soda straw), the small size of its effective target (the narrow gap between the impeller wedge’s roof and floor), the decoys and electronic warfare systems designed to defeat those seekers, and the target’s ability to rapidly roll ship in order to interpose its own impeller wedge, the probability of a hit by any single missile had always been low.
[...]
The solution had been to turn every salvo into a network of dispersed sensor platforms. Any given missile might not see the target very well—if at all—during an attack run, especially when coming in on a profile designed to make it as difficult as possible for that target’s active defenses to intercept it. But when all the seekers aboard every missile in the attack reported what they could see to the ship which had launched them, the data could be collated, combined, and analyzed. A far better tactical picture could be assembled; enemy electronic warfare tactics could be mapped and allowed for; probable decoys could be identified and excluded from the targeting queues; the other side’s evasion maneuvers could be plugged in, tracked, and projected; and refined instructions could be sent back not simply to the missiles which had supplied the data, but to every other missile in the salvo. Not only did that increase accuracy against assigned targets, but it permitted tactical officers to adjust targeting queues on the fly, redirecting missiles as their original targets were crippled or destroyed or as newer, higher-value targets were discovered. As the range increased, transmission lag set in and grew steadily worse until it reached the point at which new instructions from the firing ship were inevitably out of date and actually began degrading its missiles’ accuracy, at which point the links were cut and each missile reverted to onboard control.
[...]
no choice but to rely on her birds’ internal seekers and targeting AI, and that AI had always been rudimentary because it was designed to work in tandem with shipboard direction. That was what truly made Apollo so lethal, although the SLN as yet had no clue of just how true that was. The Mark 23-E control missiles could accept shipboard telemetry at sixty-four times the range light-speed telemetry made possible, but the Echoes had also been designed specifically for use beyond even Apollo’s shipboard control range, with every control missile in the salvo talking to every other control missile and acting as an individual processing node for the data even when relay to—and through—the mothership was unavailable. Its autonomous accuracy was no more than thirty percent or so of its accuracy under tight shipboard control, but that thirty percent was many times more accurate than any current-generation Solarian missile could achieve.

(bold added; italics original)

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, while searching UH to see if the SLN BC's deployed decoys against the autonomous Apollo strike I found this wonderful passage explaining the issues we've been discussing here. And it ties in beautifully with ThinksMarkedly's list from a couple posts back.
I'd totally forgotten about this text!

Uncompromising Honor wrote:In theory, it ought to have been simple for any missile to find something as glaringly obvious as an impeller-drive starship under power. In practice, things were a bit more complicated. It wasn’t that missiles operating in autonomous mode couldn’t find targets; it was just that they had a great deal of trouble finding—and hitting—the right targets.
True, seeing the impeller signature of a target really was technological child’s play in many ways. Unfortunately, impeller-drive starships were extremely maneuverable, their wedges sharply limited the vulnerable aspects from which they could be successfully attacked, and they mounted both active and passive defenses designed to make the task of any attack missile’s seekers as un-simple as possible.
Given the way in which a missile’s own impeller wedge narrowed its onboard seekers’ field of view (one RMN training manual likened it to steering an air car while looking at the outside world through a soda straw), the small size of its effective target (the narrow gap between the impeller wedge’s roof and floor), the decoys and electronic warfare systems designed to defeat those seekers, and the target’s ability to rapidly roll ship in order to interpose its own impeller wedge, the probability of a hit by any single missile had always been low.
[...]
The solution had been to turn every salvo into a network of dispersed sensor platforms. Any given missile might not see the target very well—if at all—during an attack run, especially when coming in on a profile designed to make it as difficult as possible for that target’s active defenses to intercept it. But when all the seekers aboard every missile in the attack reported what they could see to the ship which had launched them, the data could be collated, combined, and analyzed. A far better tactical picture could be assembled; enemy electronic warfare tactics could be mapped and allowed for; probable decoys could be identified and excluded from the targeting queues; the other side’s evasion maneuvers could be plugged in, tracked, and projected; and refined instructions could be sent back not simply to the missiles which had supplied the data, but to every other missile in the salvo. Not only did that increase accuracy against assigned targets, but it permitted tactical officers to adjust targeting queues on the fly, redirecting missiles as their original targets were crippled or destroyed or as newer, higher-value targets were discovered. As the range increased, transmission lag set in and grew steadily worse until it reached the point at which new instructions from the firing ship were inevitably out of date and actually began degrading its missiles’ accuracy, at which point the links were cut and each missile reverted to onboard control.
[...]
no choice but to rely on her birds’ internal seekers and targeting AI, and that AI had always been rudimentary because it was designed to work in tandem with shipboard direction. That was what truly made Apollo so lethal, although the SLN as yet had no clue of just how true that was. The Mark 23-E control missiles could accept shipboard telemetry at sixty-four times the range light-speed telemetry made possible, but the Echoes had also been designed specifically for use beyond even Apollo’s shipboard control range, with every control missile in the salvo talking to every other control missile and acting as an individual processing node for the data even when relay to—and through—the mothership was unavailable. Its autonomous accuracy was no more than thirty percent or so of its accuracy under tight shipboard control, but that thirty percent was many times more accurate than any current-generation Solarian missile could achieve.

(bold added; italics original)

I'm going to say that the sensor mesh is more important than the Advanced AI or the FTL - remember that about 10% of missiles in the early series died due to fratricide - The missiles didn't even discuss with their salvo mates where they were - let alone where the target was. They each followed the same commands and would regularly bumble into each other on the way there - the ultimate version of Buck Fever. So the Sensor mesh gets almost all the missiles to the target, and that's just the first advantage. The second is Parallax - the further the baseline, the better the view of the battlefield - and a cloud of missiles (even with each being myopic), allows for a multi-scopic of the battlefield. And this allows the AI (even a rudimental one) to make sure each missile has it's proper target and see through ECM and false images.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Given the way in which a missile’s own impeller wedge narrowed its onboard seekers’ field of view (one RMN training manual likened it to steering an air car while looking at the outside world through a soda straw), the small size of its effective target (the narrow gap between the impeller wedge’s roof and floor), the decoys and electronic warfare systems designed to defeat those seekers, and the target’s ability to rapidly roll ship in order to interpose its own impeller wedge, the probability of a hit by any single missile had always been low.

(bold added; italics original)

A 5mm x 200mm straw would give you a field of view of 2.86° or 171.9 arc-minutes. I calculated above that a ship at 20,000 km/s perpendicular motion (which is HIGH) is moving at 6.9 arc-minutes/s. That means it would take nearly 25 seconds to move out of this field of view. It's more than enough time for the missile to adjust to compensate.

The drawback in this manoeuvre is that the missile is accelerating ahead, so in order to both keep the ship in the field of view and track it, it will also describe a parabolic course towards the target. It can't be a direct line to where the ship will be in 4 minutes. So if all you've got are SDMs and you're firing from extreme range, then you have to adjust for the fact that the flight time is longer.

But as I said, 20,000 km/s lateral motion is unheard of in the books. The Battle of Beowulf comes close, because TF 790 was going after the Cassandra planet (fourth in the Sigma Draconis system) as that allowed them to spend as little time inside the hyperlimit as possible, while the defensive missiles were coming from near Beowulf (third planet). Therefore, the TF 790 ships had a lateral motion compared to the missiles, especially after they decided to high-tail out of the system... but I doubt it was anywhere near 20,000 km/s.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: <snip>

Missiles can still manoeuvre, though. So for The Barricade, they could simply corkscrew around a central point, roughly perpendicular to their base flight path. That would allow them to sweep a region in front of them. It's not perfect, but there's no way the Barricade was going to be anyway. They'd need to have flown with zero acceleration and with wedges touching, which is way too risky.

<snip>

The biggest problem with barricade is "shape" of a salvo. Missiles communicate with their command ships (and Command missiles) through their rear aspects. Remember all the issues with "Gun Smoke" earlier? It was impossible to fire salvos too closely or else the wedges of the back, younger salvos blocked the older salvos from receiving command updates. So missile salvos are fired as a series of flat (or gently curved) planes - any trailers are accidental, not intended. And because both side's salvos have considerable velocity when passing (and are passing close to parallel to each other's flight paths.) your time to maneuver is nil, and most salvos are going to have considerable space (multiple wedge diameters) between the missiles just to avoid fratricide, so it's vastly easier to fly between missiles in the salvo, than to randomly hit one. So the chances of an Barricade missile taking out >1 missile without extremely odd circumstances is nearly impossible.

To make Barricade work as described the missiles will need to be in a single column. Which means the only missile that has a view of the target is the lead missile and the only one that can talk to the ship is the last missile.

I get tired of David's more blatant use to the plot hammer every time he reaches the obligatory <Insert Space Battle Here> scene and can't be bothered to write anything decent.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:But I am asking how, exactly is that accomplished? Do the missiles incorporate some sort of highly sensitive gimbal that interfaces with the computer which measures time and acceleration to figure position?

I don't see any reason why it couldn't be accomplished.

Got any ideas? Because I don't, short of some sort of GPS telemetried to the missiles from Hermes Buoys seeded throughout a friendly system. But in general, I got nothing.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:There'ss no reason for Chin's fleet to have doubted that Honor was going to hit them. Changing positions after a missile goes ballistic is useless. The question was only how accurate those guesses would be when it came to hitting the ships they were aiming for, instead of hitting any wedge in the wrong proportions.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Let's flay the entire process open and dissect it for a better understanding.

The ships roll pods. The entire gang of pods have to be oriented to the correct bearing, and this orientation has to be performed right up to the moment they are fired since the targets are maneuvering. The ship itself has sensors which have the ability to detect an enemy wedge and then CIC can ascertain range and heading and acceleration. But a missile does not have that level of capability in its onboard sensors.

Why does the pod have to be oriented in any way? With dumb SDMs that can't turn around... maybe. But RMN and GSN ships have been able to fire off-bore for several years now and within a 30° arc or so for over a decade. In fact, the inability to orient was a regression from Travis' times, when the missiles were spit out in front of the ship on rockets before lighting up their wedges, which is when they'd begin their rapid acceleration downrange. But sure, let's say the pods are roughly oriented in the direction of the target... as in "the right quadrant of the sky."

The pods don't have to be oriented in a certain way. I am simply giving them the benefit of the doubt. They need to be fired in the right direction, so whether they are physically arranged pointing in the right direction before launch or they maneuver accordingly, my point has always been that they need initial instructions from the ship to do so. I can't see how missiles exit the ship kinesthetically omniscient. How can a missile know where it is, let alone where the enemy is without being led to slaughter?

Missiles have always had to be led to slaughter. The longer the range to target the more important it is to maintain the link with the ship. Greatly extended ranges have an inherent lightspeed limit which was problematical in steering a missile to target. FTL was invented to shorten the lag time. So, in greatly extended ranges, how does even an Apollo missile manage to find its arse from a hole in the ground if there is absolutely no communication with the mothership immediately after launch?

You ever been to a Mexican birthday party and seen some kid being spun around blindfolded until he has lost his bearings before attempting to crack open a piñata?

That is what happens to pods. They have to receive guidance instructions. Didn't David say that missiles don't lock on to the wedge? They couldn't at extended ranges anyway.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:The target ships are manoeuvring, so the detailed targetting to tell a missile "hit this ship" is something only the mothership could provide.

Which is my point. When would the mothership share that data? While they are in their launch tubes? That data may be useless by the time they are actually launched. And if the link with the mothership is cut immediately after launch...

I simply cannot swallow that cutting both tendons of an Apollo launch immediately after launch won't render a launch useless. We do know that traditional missiles are rendered useless if their mothership is destroyed by the enemy launch. I understand that that only applies to non GA ships, but whatever Apollo changed to make that no longer true if it is true, I haven't a clue.

Thinksmarkedly wrote: But the target grouping of ships, over 10 million km away, isn't going out of angle in any hurry. Even if those ships are moving perpendicularly at 20,000 km/s (81 minutes of acceleration at SLN BC levels), from 10 million km away their angular motion is 0.115°/s or 6.9 arc-minutes/s. I'm going to say the rough tumble of the pod discarding itself makes for more lateral motion than this. So there's no way the missile can miss the grouping of targets.

If that is true, then why are enemy launches negated if their ships are destroyed? It is because they don't have Apollo.

But! What makes Apollo so special that the missiles DO NOT NEED THE LINK?! So an Apollo missile can just arrange itself toward the right "quadrant of the sky" before it lights off its drive, and it won't light off before its cohort in front of it lights off? And it will head towards the enemy all without additional instructions after it leaves the ship? So, Apollo missiles no longer need an FTL link or any other type of tendon it would seem? If an Apollo missile simply needs coordinates then they never needed an FTL link -- if they can simply be given initial coordinates -- other than which target to destroy.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:And missiles have gravitic sensors. Not as refined as the ship, but once told that "this is the set of wedges you're going after," they will start after it and continue after it. They could get confused, for example by those targets passing behind or in front of another group of wedges -- like in basketball when the player with the ball passes behind a teammate who in turn blocks the adversary whose job was to stand in front of the first player. But the chance of this happening in the 4 to 20 minutes of the missiles' flight time is very low.

Yes, the missiles can detect gravitics, but those sensors are very limited as you said. The gravitc footprint of a particular target only comes into play after the missile finds itself within its own detection range. I am proposing cutting Apollo's links immediately after launch. They should all be orphaned at that point. Little orphaned Annies.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Even in the age of SDMs missiles had to be led to their targets until they were close enough to begin tracking themselves.

So, I ask again. What possible breakthrough did I miss where it says that missiles can exit the ship knowing where they are in space?

Nothing. They've always been programmed in the tubes to know where they're going. The problem has never been figuring out the rough location of the target ship.

It had been:

(1) losing track of which ship in the target grouping the missile was supposed to strike. In a fleet formation, those ships are performing a dance of going around each other, bringing their wedges up and down in power, and just general EW, in such a way that the missile could get confused between the high-value SD and a low-value DD.

(2) being fooled by decoys. We haven't seen this from the SLN, but we know Lorelei exists now. But that's also a reaction to more capable missiles, so in an age were missiles were more myopic, launching an RD-like vessel with an oversized and overpowered wedge could fool the missile into going after the wrong target.

(3) inability to accurately penetrate the target's defences, especially their EW. The enemy is constantly changing their EW based on past engagements (if they're not stupid). Therefore, adjusting which EW techniques and penaids worked in previous waves is incredibly useful. This was the most difficult problem to solve because of the light-lag in non-FTL sensors, not to mention the lower resolution of shipboard sensors that are tens of millions of km away (RDs help, though).

(4) inability to rebalance the targetting on the fly. Because of all the previous issues, missiles would lose track of which ship they were supposed to hit. That's why CIC had to keep telling them, "no, go after this wedge, forget that one." But it gets worse since there are multiple missiles in flight and they would conceivably all be making the same decisions, thus they could all swarm a single target and overkill it, but leave other targets only lightly-attacked. This is what the ACM solves.

I can believe that they are programmed in the tubes with initial instructions, but I don't think that bearing and possibly mode is selected until after they exit the ship, and have cleared the wedge!

Off-bore launches should be even more dependent on additional communication from the mothership before launch to reorient itself properly before lighting off its wedge. A missile's wedge is brought up to power. It doesn't make sense for a missile to have to fight against a full-up wedge to turn itself. So, either Apollo missiles still incorporate a rocket for its initial orientation (which I am unaware of) or they are oriented in advance.


.

cthia wrote:Got any ideas? Because I don't, short of some sort of GPS telemetried to the missiles from Hermes Buoys seeded throughout a friendly system. But in general, I got nothing.

The pods don't have to be oriented in a certain way. I am simply giving them the benefit of the doubt. They need to be fired in the right direction, so whether they are physically arranged pointing in the right direction before launch or they maneuver accordingly, my point has always been that they need initial instructions from the ship to do so. I can't see how missiles exit the ship kinesthetically omniscient. How can a missile know where it is, let alone where the enemy is without being led to slaughter?

Missiles have always had to be led to laughter. The longer the range to target the more important it is to maintain the link with the ship. Greatly extended ranges have an inherent lightspeed limit which was problematical in steering a missile to target. FTL was invented to shorten the lag time. So, in greatly extended ranges, how does even an Apollo missile manage to find its arse from a hole in the ground if there is absolutely no communication with the mothership immediately after launch?

That is what happens to pods. They have to receive guidance instructions. Didn't David say that missiles didn't lock on to the wedge? They couldn't at extended ranges anyway.

Which is my point. When would the mothership share that data? While they are in their launch tubes? That data may be useless by the time they are actually launched. And if the link with the mothership is cut immediately after launch...

I simply cannot swallow that cutting both tendons of an Apollo launch immediately after launch won't render a launch useless. We do know that traditional missiles are rendered useless if their mothership is destroyed by the enemy launch. I understand that that only applies to non GA ships, but whatever Apollo changed to make that no longer true I haven't a clue.

If that is true, then why are enemy launches negated if their ships are destroyed? It is because they don't have Apollo.

But! What makes Apollo so special that the missiles DO NOT NEED THE LINK?! So an Apollo missile can just arrange itself toward the right "quadrant of the sky" before it lights off its drive, and it won't light off before its cohort in front of it lights off? And it will head towards the enemy all without additional instructions after it leaves the ship? So, Apollo missiles no longer need an FTL link or any other type of tendon it would seem? If an Apollo missile simply needs coordinates then they never needed an FTL link -- if they can simply be given initial coordinates -- other than which target to destroy.

Yes, the missiles can detect gravitics, but those sensors are very limited as you said. The gravitc footprint of a particular target only comes into play after the missiles finds itself within its own detection range. I am proposing cutting Apollo's entire launch immediately after launch. They should all be orphaned at that point. Little orphaned Annies.

I can believe that they are programmed in the tubes with initial instructions, but I don't think that bearing and possibly mode is selected until after they exit the ship, and have cleared the wedge!

Off-bore launches should be even more dependent on additional communication from the mothership before launch to reorient itself properly before lighting off its wedge. A missile's wedge is brought up to power. It doesn't bmake sense for a missile's to have to fight against a full up wedge to turn it. So, either Apollo missiles still incorporate a rocket for its initial orientation (which I am unaware of) or they are oriented in advance.

Do you accept that a drone can be fired and run a complex course without special instructions from the ship? It would defeat the purpose, if the ship had to continually send instructions to a reconnaissance drone that was intended to be stealthily checking an enemy position. I think you need to accept that missiles have some sort of guidance system that can get them from point A to somewhere close to point B. The ship cannot be treating them like an old-fashioned RC plane, where every change had to be communicated in the minutest detail and they certainly cannot count on anything like a GPS satellite being available.

The biggest part of ship control among the pre-Apollo missiles had to do with when to light off the decoys and Dazzlers, acquiring a target and then discriminating between valuable targets and enemy decoys. But with Apollo, the command missiles can do all that, if necessary. However I believe that even the older missiles could try to attack the enemy without continual instructions: note that Filareta's mass launch killed ships and people that Honor regretted.