?

tlb wrote:Indeed what you are saying could be taken to mean that there is no merit in ramming for a MK-23E traveling less than .9c. At what point in the motor burn does the missile hit that speed, taking into account the relativistic mass increase?

Never. Without accounting for relativistic effects, the Mk23 missiles accelerate at 0.09c/min, so in 9 minutes they're only up to 0.81c. They never reach 0.9c.

With relativistic effects accounted for, it's even less.

The 4-stage missiles could hit that number, but I don't think we're going to see them in action at very long ranges, as without accounting for relativistic effects, they'd reach 1.08c, which is impossible. So RFC would need to take hyperbolic acceleration into account, which would screw all previous numbers up, or have them used in a context where their final speed is not meaningfully different from that of a 3-stager.

However what Daryl quoted was a statement that it is unnecessary for an extreme relativistic missile to have a warhead. That is not the same thing as recognizing that your obsession has merit. The author's statement takes no stand on the benefit (or lack) of ramming.

A kinetic strike has to, you know, strike. A miss by 10 cm is still a miss and the target suffers absolutely no ill effects. Kinetic strikes on ships at long range are impossible in the HV, because the target ships will simply have their wedges facing the oncoming missiles. Since those are ballistic, there's no way they're going to hit the ship, they'll simply expend themselves on the wedge. Even if they still had wedges for manoeuvring, they couldn't clear the lip of the kilt and turn into the ship before striking the other wedge plane.

tlb wrote:

Daryl wrote:Reasons of plot?
In The Excalibur Alternative, RFC shows that he was aware of relativistic matters, when he stated that missiles at 0.9C and above didn't need warheads, as both the velocity and increased mass would make a warhead redundant.

cthia wrote:IOW, my long-standing obsession with the MK-23E choosing to ram a target at the end of its run only has merit at .9C, as recognized by the author.

Indeed what you are saying could be taken to mean that there is no merit in ramming for a MK-23E traveling less than .9c. At what point in the motor burn does the missile hit that speed, taking into account the relativistic mass increase?

However what Daryl quoted was a statement that it is unnecessary for an extreme relativistic missile to have a warhead. That is not the same thing as recognizing that your obsession has merit. The author's statement takes no stand on the benefit (or lack) of ramming.

Even the author can't have his cake and eat it too. Trust me. I've tried.

tlb wrote:However what Daryl quoted was a statement that it is unnecessary for an extreme relativistic missile to have a warhead. That is not the same thing as recognizing that your obsession has merit. The author's statement takes no stand on the benefit (or lack) of ramming.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A kinetic strike has to, you know, strike. A miss by 10 cm is still a miss and the target suffers absolutely no ill effects. Kinetic strikes on ships at long range are impossible in the HV, because the target ships will simply have their wedges facing the oncoming missiles. Since those are ballistic, there's no way they're going to hit the ship, they'll simply expend themselves on the wedge. Even if they still had wedges for manoeuvring, they couldn't clear the lip of the kilt and turn into the ship before striking the other wedge plane.

While I do not believe that ramming is useful, I do not think that is necessarily because the missile will waste itself on the wedge. Instead I think that the missiles are not aimed directly at the ships in order to get a passing shot, either down the front or up the back. That means the control missile would have to do an impossible amount of turning to actually hit a ship.

As for hitting the wedge: prior to the laser-head, the primary job of the missile was to hit the wedge or sidewall with sufficient energy to knock it down. Ramming is just a reversion to that previous role, with enough kinetic energy substituting for the old nuclear warhead.

tlb wrote:As for hitting the wedge: prior to the laser-head, the primary job of the missile was to hit the wedge or sidewall with sufficient energy to knock it down. Ramming is just a reversion to that previous role, with enough kinetic energy substituting for the old nuclear warhead.

Not the wedge. We're told the only thing that can knock a wedge down is a more powerful wedge, and no missile is going to have a wedge more powerful than a warship, of any size.

But the sidewall, sure. Most navies probably still have the doctrine of facing an attack sidewall-on, so they can continue to fire CMs and make use of their PDLCs. I am not sure if they'd keep the sidewalls facing the missiles so the accuracy of the PDLCs would be significantly higher, or if at that stage they thought their defences were sufficient. It's probably both: I don't know anyone who wouldn't use the wedge as an impenetrable shield if they could, so their not doing so implies that it was a worse solution than keeping the PDLCs firing.

I don't remember when we first heard of taking missiles wedge-on. There's no discussion of this in the early books, and even the Battle of Solon, the description remains of the number of missiles taken out by LACs, CMs and PDLCs, in that order. I can only remember the Battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge having discussed this and that the RMN forces did turn wedge on. And that was a cruiser force, so they had no Keyholes available. And yet Adm. Jane Isotalo in the the SLN force did not seem surprised about this, though maybe they couldn't tell the orientation of the wedges at the distance in question.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:As for hitting the wedge: prior to the laser-head, the primary job of the missile was to hit the wedge or sidewall with sufficient energy to knock it down. Ramming is just a reversion to that previous role, with enough kinetic energy substituting for the old nuclear warhead.

Not the wedge. We're told the only thing that can knock a wedge down is a more powerful wedge, and no missile is going to have a wedge more powerful than a warship, of any size.

But the sidewall, sure. Most navies probably still have the doctrine of facing an attack sidewall-on, so they can continue to fire CMs and make use of their PDLCs. I am not sure if they'd keep the sidewalls facing the missiles so the accuracy of the PDLCs would be significantly higher, or if at that stage they thought their defences were sufficient. It's probably both: I don't know anyone who wouldn't use the wedge as an impenetrable shield if they could, so their not doing so implies that it was a worse solution than keeping the PDLCs firing.

I don't remember when we first heard of taking missiles wedge-on. There's no discussion of this in the early books, and even the Battle of Solon, the description remains of the number of missiles taken out by LACs, CMs and PDLCs, in that order. I can only remember the Battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge having discussed this and that the RMN forces did turn wedge on. And that was a cruiser force, so they had no Keyholes available. And yet Adm. Jane Isotalo in the the SLN force did not seem surprised about this, though maybe they couldn't tell the orientation of the wedges at the distance in question.

Yes, the wedge too if the physics is going to be believed. Something as large as a missile traveling at .9C+ should possess enough kinetic energy to take out a god. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

cthia wrote:Yes, the wedge too if the physics is going to be believed. Something as large as a missile traveling at .9C+ should possess enough kinetic energy to take out a god. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

We're told that nothing can survive the wedge. There's no way to confirm one way or the other because this is entirely up to the author to decide.

In any case, it's pretty easy to evade something coming ballistically.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Yes, the wedge too if the physics is going to be believed. Something as large as a missile traveling at .9C+ should possess enough kinetic energy to take out a god. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

We're told that nothing can survive the wedge. There's no way to confirm one way or the other because this is entirely up to the author to decide.

In any case, it's pretty easy to evade something coming ballistically.

I'm not so sure an Alpha launch of missiles traveling damn near the speed of light would be so easy to avoid at such short distances. Consider that the launch is not ballistic the entire trip. It wouldn't go ballistic until the final leg. And only one missile needs to hit a ship, not hundreds, not even several. Just one hit and lights out.

cthia wrote:I'm not so sure an Alpha launch of missiles traveling damn near the speed of light would be so easy to avoid at such short distances. Consider that the launch is not ballistic the entire trip. It wouldn't go ballistic until the final leg. And only one missile needs to hit a ship, not hundreds, not even several. Just one hit and lights out.

Let's say the missile's wedge cut off 1 minute before interception. That means the ship in question has 1 minute to manoeuvre out of the way. At 500 gravities, it moves nearly 9000 km. A circle of that radius has an area of 244 million km². The wedge of a superdreadnought, seen face-on, has an area of about 25,000 km², or 4 orders of magnitude less. All the ship needs to do is find a spot in that circle where no missile, which have gone ballistic, can hit it.

So the missiles won't try to go ballistic a minute or more from impact. They'd do that with 10 seconds or less, which reduces the range of the evasion by (⅙)², and the area where the ship could locate itself by (⅙)⁴.

I still say that's pointless. Instead of going ballistic 10 seconds from the target, those MDMs could simply go ballistic for 30 seconds between the second and third stages, therefore arriving with their wedges still on, and thus able to manoeuvre into the ship.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm not so sure an Alpha launch of missiles traveling damn near the speed of light would be so easy to avoid at such short distances. Consider that the launch is not ballistic the entire trip. It wouldn't go ballistic until the final leg. And only one missile needs to hit a ship, not hundreds, not even several. Just one hit and lights out.

Let's say the missile's wedge cut off 1 minute before interception. That means the ship in question has 1 minute to manoeuvre out of the way. At 500 gravities, it moves nearly 9000 km. A circle of that radius has an area of 244 million km². The wedge of a superdreadnought, seen face-on, has an area of about 25,000 km², or 4 orders of magnitude less. All the ship needs to do is find a spot in that circle where no missile, which have gone ballistic, can hit it.

So the missiles won't try to go ballistic a minute or more from impact. They'd do that with 10 seconds or less, which reduces the range of the evasion by (⅙)², and the area where the ship could locate itself by (⅙)⁴.

I still say that's pointless. Instead of going ballistic 10 seconds from the target, those MDMs could simply go ballistic for 30 seconds between the second and third stages, therefore arriving with their wedges still on, and thus able to manoeuvre into the ship.

I will trust your math, but you must consider that the designers of the missile run those same numbers along with the optimum spread pattern and vector the missiles will need to assume. We're talking about the throw weight of a Solarian Alpha launch. (It is ironic that a spread pattern of a launch with this type of acceleration and throw weight needs to be spread out, instead of the tightly packed launches (unbefitting of the SL) of Apollo missiles.)

And you can definitely count on the first unveiling of this acceleration to be devastating, catching a defender off-guard. The range at the moment the missile goes "supernova" will catch all evasive maneuvers off guard. And remember, even though the launch won't be as good as Lays Potato Chips, you will only need to eat just one.

And another thing, totally unlike when a missile goes ballistic and you don't know where it is. In this case when a missile goes supernova, you may not realize that it has gone supernova. And possibly neither will your sensors and defensive systems realize what is coming if it can no longer detect a launch that is now traveling at such speeds.

"WTF? Did it just go ballistic?"

Uh uh.

cthia wrote:And you can definitely count on the first unveiling of this acceleration to be devastating, catching a defender off-guard. The range at the moment the missile goes "supernova" will catch all evasive maneuvers off guard. And remember, even though the launch won't be as good as Lays Potato Chips, you will only need to eat just one.

And another thing, totally unlike when a missile goes ballistic and you don't know where it is. In this case when a missile goes supernova, you may not realize that it has gone supernova. And possibly neither will your sensors and defensive systems realize what is coming if it can no longer detect a launch that is now traveling at such speeds.

Why are you equating this to going "supernova"? The target ship will be able to track the missile all the time it is accelerating and so will know its track when it goes ballistic.