A medley of missiles

[rust]

Way more dangerous than a mere nuke, as making a nuke explode is hard. Making antimatter explode is just a matter of an interruption in your magnetic and/or gravitic containment system for a fraction of a second.

Indeed, just think of the ship carrying the missiles with the antimatter war-
heads being hit by enemy fire. A nuke hit by a laser will almost certainly
just stop to be a useful warhead, but an antimatter warhead hit by a laser
will demonstrate immediately that it is still functional.

 

[rinku]

OK, but it was a stationary unit, not something mounted on a moving vessel.

Just because it *wasn't* mounted on a moving vessel doesn't mean it was impossible to do so. Plenty of ships large enough for this to have been done existed in 1942.

Having said that, I agree that an antimatter warhead would be simpler to construct than a power plant. Safely storing such things is another matter. Nuke dampers allow for safe storage of nuke missiles, but how do you damp down antimatter? It may be precisely *that* technology that opens up all the antimatter tech (some kind of stasis field?).

 

[dayriff]

Having said that, I agree that an antimatter warhead would be simpler to construct than a power plant. Safely storing such things is another matter. Nuke dampers allow for safe storage of nuke missiles, but how do you damp down antimatter? It may be precisely *that* technology that opens up all the antimatter tech (some kind of stasis field?).

That's not too tough. All you have to do is contain the antimatter in a vacuum where it doesn't touch matter. We use magnetic fields today, and with Traveller technology you could use gravity controls to pin the mass in place.

The trouble is if the power shuts off.

 

[rinku]

The trouble is if the power shuts off.

...or if the vacuum seal is breached. Two potential points of failure from battle damage, with catastrophic results. The risks likely outweigh the benefits.

I'm thinking that something other than currently available strategies might be required. Perhaps some form of exotic matter that won't annihilate with either antimatter or normal matter could be used as a buffer? Or a free standing force field box that remains static until keyed to release the fuel? The field could be generated by the contents (an antimatter machine would work as well a normal matter one, including energy storage etc).

Having said that... it would be possible to design a warship around the weapon - have all the antimatter missiles stored deep in a heavily armoured ball in the centre of the ship, with a lock to the firing chamber and a firing tube to the hull. This would minimise the risks, not eliminate them, though.

 

[locarno24]

Actually that's not quite a bad idea. Of course it's only going to work for certain settings, but if you have a big enough launcher, you can impart a great deal of velocity to a missile from the very start.

I actually did a bit more of back-of-ye-fag-packet calculation. It's good for short-ranged engagements, less so for long range.



As far as throw-then-fire missiles goes, that's a nice idea - a 'drive off' launcher could work provided you can get the throw velocity high enough

In order to match the average flight speed of a 'standing start' 5g missile, you need the following muzzle velocities at the following target ranges.

short range (10km-1,250km): 0.5-5.5 km/s, average 3 km/s
medium range (1,250km-10,000km): 5.5-15.7 km/s, average 10 km/s
long range (10,000-20,000km): 15.7km/s-24.7 km/s, average 20 km/s
very long range (20,000-50,000km): 24.7-35.0 km/s, average 30 km/s

Without any real science to go on, the first two seem achievable without too much trouble in comparison to the railgun: a barbette or bay-sized railgun can fling a slug of a size not that dissimilar to a standard missile to a minimum of short range in a maximum of one turn.

Since this is the maximum range it can fire accurately, it's probably better than this, but that's not a bad worst case estimate.

In order to cover short range (1250 Km) in 1 turn (360 s) the muzzle velocity of a railgun must be roughly 3.5 kilometres per second, which is pretty close to the short-range requirements for our 'dead-launch' missile launcher. As a result, I can imagine this sort of launch being doable to short range for a barbette/bay sized launcher if firing missiles rather than heavy missiles (i.e. about a quarter of the payload fired per turn)

A spinal launcher should easily have the accelerating barrel length to get 10 km/s, which again gives us enough heft to do the same at medium range. I'd suggest that firing any further is going to be more awkward - 20km/s or more is potentially doable but that's going to take a very potent mass driver (i.e. one running through a multi-section capital ship).

A bigger spinal launcher isn't going to give you that much more muzzle velocity - the faster you're going, the less time you spend in that region of the barrel, hence you get rapidly diminishing returns on lengthening the accelerating barrel - but it will allow you to have multiple parallel barrels, allowing an accelerated launch of an entire missile barrage rather than a single round.

Again, this is going to be dependent on the payload of each missile and the mass of the spinal mount as to how many tubes you can fit and what muzzle velocity it can manage.





Antimatter-tipped missiles:

If you've got a ship with an AM/M reactor, then you've already got AM storage on the ship which the designers consider to be 'safe'.

Quite possibly you'd store the missiles empty, then 'charge' the missile's payload with antimatter immediately before cycling it into the launcher.

 

[Captain Jonah]

I forgot to mention that there is a Special Supplement to CT on Missiles available on the CT CDROM

Hope that helps!

Oh forgot all about that, dug it out last night to look at. Thanks for the reminder.

Re antimater. Methods of production here on tech 8 Earth have improved steadily over the last few decades and Cern make the stuff regularly, ok in tiny volumes but they do make it. Tech 9 should continue the production improvements, so will tech 10, 11, 12 etc. At some point we will be making enough of the stuff to arm warheads with it even if we haven't sorted the ways or using it as a drive or power plant.

I think the biggest problem is not handling the stuff safely or getting it to blow up, we do that now. The problem is making the stuff in large volumes to put in those drives and power plants. Solve production in volume and we could be using the stuff waaaaay sooner than tech 16.

 

[rinku]

It's not just the volume of production and problems of storage; there's also the energy cost involved in creating it. Unless you find some natural source (and it's highly likely these are all at galactic distances) it takes more energy to create it than you get from it as fuel (you have to add overhead energy costs).

It's also bloody tricky to convert to electrical power - the energy is released as gamma rays.

So I can see a bunch of reasons why it may not be a viable technology for a long time.

 

[Captain Jonah]

It's not just the volume of production and problems of storage; there's also the energy cost involved in creating it. Unless you find some natural source (and it's highly likely these are all at galactic distances) it takes more energy to create it than you get from it as fuel (you have to add overhead energy costs).

It's also bloody tricky to convert to electrical power - the energy is released as gamma rays.

So I can see a bunch of reasons why it may not be a viable technology for a long time.

Convert to electrical energy?

Hey this is a missile thread, I'm talking about blowing stuff up :twisted:

 

[MarkB]

Any other suggestions for missile concepts welcome - be they attack missiles, counter-missiles, countermeasures missiles, or launcers.

A couple of things I'd like to see (bearing in mind I don't have High Guard, so they may already be covered):

EMP Missiles - designed to cripple a ship without affecting its passengers. Damage is affected by armour (let's assume that armouring a ship includes some level of component shielding), and EMP missiles gain their own damage table to roll on - one which includes all external and internal components, but not hull, armour, structure or fuel. Crew hits are included, but affect only occupants of Low Berths. Ship components can be hardened against EMP attacks individually at additional cost, except for sensors and comms - antennae aren't much use if you put them in a Faraday cage.

Close-range missiles - essentially dumbfire rockets with no homing capability and barely any fuel, all their remaining capacity dedicated to warheads. Taking no penalty at Adjacent range and -2 at Close, they're useless at greater range as they're easily dodged. Do an extra die of damage compared to their standard counterparts of the same size, but if used at Adjacent range, on a successful hit they'll deal half damage to the ship that launched them due to being caught in their blast radius. A specialised munition for use by heavily-armoured vessels to take down weaker opponents, and as a last-ditch defense against craft attempting boarding operations.

 

[rust]

Ship components can be hardened against EMP attacks individually at additional cost, except for sensors and comms - antennae aren't much use if you put them in a Faraday cage.

I suspect that laser sensors and laser comms would remain unaffected.

 

[MarkB]

Ship components can be hardened against EMP attacks individually at additional cost, except for sensors and comms - antennae aren't much use if you put them in a Faraday cage.

I suspect that laser sensors and laser comms would remain unaffected.

Good point.

 

[DFW]

Ship components can be hardened against EMP attacks individually at additional cost, except for sensors and comms - antennae aren't much use if you put them in a Faraday cage.

I suspect that laser sensors and laser comms would remain unaffected.

As would grav sensors

 

[BP]

Actually, a Faraday cage is by no means the only method of protection - antennas and sensors can, in fact, be protected from EMP (as they indeed are in certain RW equipment). :wink:

Additionally, when it comes to laser and gravitic devices, although their operational nature is not subject to interruption, their supporting equipment can still be subject to the effects of EMP. :twisted:

 

[locarno24]

Agreed. You can always blow out the non-hardened electronics, regardless of what sensor is hung on the end.

I'm not sure what that will mean in practical terms, though. As noted, probably messing around with the hit location table again*.

Thing is, shouldn't any nuclear warhead produce a significant EMP?



* a certain amount of messing around will be required for armour-piercing warheads. I'm thinking of giving a chance for any double hits to roll on the internal table, even if the target still has hull remaining.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Morning all.

I have always presumed that most if not all electronics on a starship have a minimum lavel of hardening to protect against the levels of background radiation you get from just floating around outside of an atmosphere.

Hardening a bridge or rad shielding a ship makes it imune to EMP and radiation weapon hits.

As a side note. At what tech level does all of the wiring in a ship become fibre optic and hence immune to EMP. At what tech level do we get optical processors (fairly EMP resistant) and laser/optical cube data storage also fairly immune to EMP. There are companies messing with some of this now and fibre optic is routinely used so by tech 9 or 10 we ought to be routinely making stuff that can survive EMP.

Actualy that raises questions for the Darrian thread. :twisted:

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Actualy that raises questions for the Darrian thread. :twisted:

I'll answer this one here.

In the book the Darrians do have optical processors and storage crystals. Everything in their society is hardened against EMP and backup systems are provided. Even the fact that some of their worlds are still at strangely low manufacturing TLs is part of their recovery plan if ever another Maghiz occurs.

It makes their ships in particular very expensive, but to a Darrian it is a non-negotiable part of the functionality.

 

[DFW]

Additionally, when it comes to laser and gravitic devices, although their operational nature is not subject to interruption, their supporting equipment can still be subject to the effects of EMP. :twisted:

Yes, that's true. But, even at our current TL we can & do protect sensitive computers and equipment from Nuc EMP in vehicles. In my games since '77 I've not used the EMP rules when dealing with starships. They are beyond ridiculous. No need for a Fib computer as the computer is shielded inside a shielded craft and any connections are redundantly protected against current and surges via surge arrestors & filters. Even against the E1 pulse.

Full disclosure: I created/modeled scenarios of terrorists using EMP attacks against critical civilian transportation infrastructure targets for the DoD/CIA/NSA/MoD.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Additionally, when it comes to laser and gravitic devices, although their operational nature is not subject to interruption, their supporting equipment can still be subject to the effects of EMP. :twisted:

Yes, that's true. But, even at our current TL we can & do protect sensitive computers and equipment from Nuc EMP in vehicles. In my games since '77 I've not used the EMP rules when dealing with starships. They are beyond ridiculous. No need for a Fib computer as the computer is shielded inside a shielded craft and any connections are redundantly protected against current and surges via surge arrestors & filters. Even against the E1 pulse.

Full disclosure: I created/modeled scenarios of terrorists using EMP attacks against critical civilian transportation infrastructure targets for the DoD/CIA/NSA/MoD.

Probably easier to assume that EMP is a not starter due to anyone by tech 9/10 having gotten past being vunerable to it. Though that still leaves a lot of Imperial worlds vunerable. At higher tech levels I always thought they were banned bacause of WMD/Radiation anyway. A small nuke missile does very little to a ship, makes a mess in the middle of a city though.

DoD/CIA/nothing to see here move along/MoD.

 

[DFW]

Probably easier to assume that EMP is a not starter due to anyone by tech 9/10 having gotten past being vunerable to it. Though that still leaves a lot of Imperial worlds vunerable. At higher tech levels I always thought they were banned bacause of WMD/Radiation anyway. A small nuke missile does very little to a ship, makes a mess in the middle of a city though.

DoD/CIA/nothing to see here move along/MoD.

Yes, it is much more work to protect systems on a worlds surface due to many factors. Cost being not the least of them.

 

[BP]

Yep - quite aware, as my first line indicated, that intentionally hardened systems have been around since shortly after the invention of weapons capable of generating EMPs... (and have worked with MIL-SPEC systems )

In the OTU, well, many authors lack sufficient knowledge to correctly cover scientific and technical aspects, so we are often given a rather comic book level (or Internet Wiki quality) approach to such knowledge. :roll:

IMTU in the eighties, I assumed all computer and starship systems where generally photonic based and largely immune to EMP (though not all EM sensors) - since, till AT&T research was decimated at the hand of politicians and the entertainment 'industry', that is exactly were mankind was headed...

On the other hand, photonic systems are subject to breakdown ('glass' is a fluid) and effects from radiation - something I did utilize occasionally to explain systems malfunctions