Anti-missile weapons

[Mongoose Pete]

Apparently you don't understand how a missile is going to get from launch ship to target over vast distances. Sure, have the missile floating for long periods of time while the target is accelerating away. Cool!

Actually I did specifically point out that scenario in my first post. However, not all combat is going to be a tail chase, and even if it is, the pursued ship can still launch passively.

Power source please... The greatly avoided topic of those arguing for no IR.

A ballistic cruising missile does not need a fully activated power plant. A simple battery will run the electronics until it needs to operate its drives.

Which is why I used a smaller number. However, I used TL 7 sensor sensitivity. Would you like me to factor in probable TL 13-15 sensitivity and DSP? I don't think you do.

Likewise I imagine TL 13-15 stealth technology will keep pace.

Again, not relevant. Unless you are now stating that standard ship missiles are refrigerated & insulated enough to basically be at close to absolute zero? Let me know.

Why not? 3 degrees Kelvin should be child's play for TL13. The energy required to refrigerate is plentiful once you have Traveller fusion plants. (and before you seize on it, I am proposing the launching ship is doing the refrigeration, not the missile itself)

If a flare is stationary it would quickly get out of line between the missile and the moving, maneuvering target. As to those who think the missile is going to have mounted lasers detecting and then shooting the precise locations of the small passive sensors on the target ship, I have a bridge or two to sell ya. At a high price.

I was assuming that a ECM missile launched as part of the volley was providing the flares, my apologies for not being specific.

On the other hand I was suggesting the laser was being fired from the launching ship, not the missile itself (that would of course be pointless). You don't need to be accurate to swamp the sensors anyway, just let the collimation widen a bit - you're not trying to damage the ship, just swamp its sensors in the low IR spectrum.

 

[DFW]

A ballistic cruising missile does not need a fully activated power plant. A simple battery will run the electronics until it needs to operate its drives.

Like I stated before. You aren't addressing. A floating missile isn't getting any closer to the target. Using the Mongoose Trav rules, give me the PP, drive type, G rating & duration. I'll wait to answer until you address...

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Like I stated before. You aren't addressing. A floating missile isn't getting any closer to the target. Using the Mongoose Trav rules, give me the PP, drive type, G rating & duration. I'll wait to answer until you address...

Seriously? I thought we were debating the extrapolation of current tech and physics understanding. Considering that the MgT ship combat system is very simplified, it strikes me as being somewhat fallacious to claim a missile cannot get any closer to a target unless its is actively using drives, just because this particular circumstance isn't specifically covered in the rules.

You know as well as I that a cold-launched missile will preserve its velocity and vector once released. There are plenty of situations where a passively launched missile could intercept a target in a ballistic manner, only triggering its drives to strike home once it closes to close range... that is if it needs to, Bomb-Pumped torpedoes being the exception to the rule here.

If the target is unaware of the missiles or the salvo has been fired correctly anticipating evasive manoeuvring, then of course drives aren't required until they get to knife range. Perhaps that is the reason for the Gunnery Check for missile fire, prior to its to-hit roll. If not, it is certainly adaptable to the situation. :wink:

However, this is all besides the point since if I drop a few heat radiating spoof missiles as part of the salvo I can still mask the existence of normal missiles under drive (even without stealthing or cyrogenics) by swamping the IR sensors. Even with technology today you could easily outshine the heat signature of the real missile by five or six orders of magnitude. That's without all the other heat signatures of other objects like ships, lasers and fusion beams confusing the sensors as Locarno rightly pointed out.

 

[Ishmael]

It seems to me that the issue has never been whether or not the target can see the incoming missiles, or anything else in space. The real issue is whether the target can identify the threat and get an accurate lock on the incoming missiles.
As far as I know, the rules abstract all the sensor and ECM stuff anyways such that better tech and more powerful sensors/computers will have the advantage.
A tech 15 missile launched by a tech 15 ship with tech 15 sensors should be able to spoof a lower tech target. A low tech missile should NOT be able to spoof a high tech target. If the rules cause that, then let the rules settle the issue.

I mean, if you want to focus on RW physics for missiles and sensors, then wouldn't you have to apply such to the ships too? And does anyone really want to get into thermal management for Trav ships and radiators and all that fun stuff?

Or will RW lasers ( not the Traveller lasers ) extrapolated to tech 15 x-ray lasers be able to do the job at the ranges that Trav space combat occurs? Just how accurate are turrets or aiming mechanisms?...100% no slop in the machine?

Just let the rules as written handle it.

 

[rust]

And does anyone really want to get into thermal management for Trav ships and radiators and all that fun stuff?

Ah, that's an easy one, the excess heat is of course pumped into jump-
space where Grandfather uses it to power his collection of ancient per-
petuum mobiles ... 8)

 

[Ishmael]

Maybe Grandfather's power comes from a huge array of Stirling engines?

 

[justacaveman]

Use excess heat to run steam turbines to generate electricity?

I give a TL bonus/penalty to anti-missile systems (+1/-1 for every TL difference).

 

[locarno24]

Or far simpler, just target the ship/sensor with a low power laser every ten seconds which will overload the IR receptors and keep them saturated

Standard IR countermeasures technology in use. Currently fitted, amongst other things, to most Israeli and many American civil airliners (i.e. it's not military restricted level tech, even today). It's a fundamental problem for sensors (whether radar, sonar, IR, whatever) - the more sensitive your receiver, the harder it is to filter out the noise, especially if it's being deliberately induced.

Use excess heat to run steam turbines to generate electricity?

Heat doesn't go away, and pretty much anything you can do generates more heat. Any heat generated must be radiated from an object. What isn't required is for the heat to be radiated uniformly - a cooling system doesn't remove heat, it just moves it somewhere else (and generates some additional heat in the process).

You have to then radiate the heat from the 'somewhere else', but that is, in this situation, quite okay. It's equivalent to quite a few astronomic or earth observation satellites which use cooled 'cameras' - one face is kept cool (so nothing interferes with a very sensitive sensor) at the expense of having a heat sink dumping heat like a man who's just downed a bottle of chilli vodka on the other side of the spacecraft where it doesn't matter.

 

[Nobby-W]

Ok, so this isn't entirely a travller question but i was just pondering the idea.
At todays technology level, would it be possible to create an anti missile missile. I know we have stuff like CIWS, but i mean a proper missile.
If we already have something like this would someone link me too it? Oh and i dont mean stuff like the patriot system, i mean missiles ot be fired at things like air-to-air missiles.
thanks in advance.

Yes, this technology certainly exists at the nautical warship level. Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) is a surface-air missile that can do low-level engagements against anti-shipping missiles (which are quite large) or aircraft.

 

[CosmicGamer]

A floating missile isn't getting any closer to the target.

Depends if you are the chaser or the chasee.

Take into consideration the missile as a defensive weapon.

So what if they can easily shoot it down and maneuver to dodge the fast moving incoming debris field. Keep the chaser occupied, make them use some computer power, weapons, maneuverability, sensors, ECM and so on dealing with the incoming missiles instead of you.

Kind of like dropping some mobile smart mines behind you as you run.

 

[Condottiere]

Doppler shift to track distance, if it's coming straight at you.

 

[Infojunky]

More likely less missiles with more warheads, I think. A "shotgun missile"could transport a high number of comparatively tiny warheads, releasedat high speed at a distance from the target, that act like cluster bombs, creating a three-dimensional conical "kill zone". It should not be too difficult to overload the taget's defensive systems this way.

Trav missiles are FAR too small to incorporate sub-munitions that are large enough, or powerful enough to damage a spaceship hull.

Well that depends, How big are the base missiles?

In that are they 12 per ton with Autoloader over head? Like the Torpedoes, or is the autoloader part of the launcher?

Right now I am considering that the autoloader is part of the launcher. Reasoning is that each missile will be around .5 m wide and 3 m long approximately the size of a Harpoon Missile (i.e. a light anti-shipping missile). This also leads to a 4 missile mount like they added to the recommissioned Battleships. (Or think of a impromptu mount inside a merchantman's cargo door and the like)

 

[Nobby-W]

Ok, so this isn't entirely a travller question but i was just pondering the idea.
At todays technology level, would it be possible to create an anti missile missile. I know we have stuff like CIWS, but i mean a proper missile.
If we already have something like this would someone link me too it? Oh and i dont mean stuff like the patriot system, i mean missiles ot be fired at things like air-to-air missiles.
thanks in advance.

Yes, these systems do exist; examples include the Rolling Airframe Missile system and tank based systems such as Arena and Trophy.

 

[wbnc]

I know I am jumping in late, but as much as I would like to see it the difficulties of shooting down a star ship grade missile is pretty daunting.

I did some quick math and came up with a volume of 1.16 cubic meters and change for a standard missile.

12 missiles per ton, 14 cubic feet per ton/12 = approximately 1.16 cubic meters.

if the missile is 1 meter long it is 37 centimeters across. it is still half the size of an AGM-65 maverick missile.( 249cmx30Cm, or 5.84cubic meters ) It is accelerating at 10gee ( as per Highguard Mgt). That makes it both extremely compact, and extremely agile. far more agile than anything in inventory currently.

Since a missile is capable of hitting a target from teh distant (50,000km) in five rounds (30 minutes) it is moving at around 100,000km (62,000mph, or mach 81.7) at maximum velocity....which means it would move 0.1722 miles(909 feet/277.063m) in 100th of a second

at a dstance of less than 1000km, the system would have to lock on, track, fire, and intercept in less than .62 seconds....only a laser is capable of that sort of reaction time....

And this is for a missile that only makes minor corrections to track a target, if it's actively avoiding incoming fire...well the whole scenario just went from bad, "Blast it all.... just put extra armor on the ship and forget about it...."

 

[F33D]

Ok, so this isn't entirely a travller question but i was just pondering the idea.
At todays technology level, would it be possible to create an anti missile missile. I know we have stuff like CIWS, but i mean a proper missile.

Sure. THE USN has a great one. The SeaRAM system by Raytheon

 

[Reynard]

How about an light autocannon (low tech) or a light gauss cannon system in a turret that sprays an area at adjacent range? Relatively cheap.

 

[phavoc]

The Vehicle books cover weaponry intended to intercept missiles, artillery shells and other related incoming fire, using both lasers and projectile weapons. Plus things like chaff and decoys.

There's really no reason why this can't be translated into starship weapons too.

 

[wbnc]

The Vehicle books cover weaponry intended to intercept missiles, artillery shells and other related incoming fire, using both lasers and projectile weapons. Plus things like chaff and decoys.

There's really no reason why this can't be translated into starship weapons too.

Hmm something like a laser based Phalanx/CIWS system. I'd make it a ships system instead of a weapons system so it doesn't burn up hard points. and Give it somewhere around 1 pt of star-ship damage

If you made it automated using the ships fire control software rating as it's bonus, you could give the ship an automatic point defense attack against incoming missiles without using up a reaction, or requiring the gunner to interact with the system.

Chaff:
chaff is available as a variant ammo type for sandcasters.

Interceptors...hmm..tricky since missiles technically cant be inside short rage....but if you used a "interceptor" variant ammo for sand caster barrels/missile turrets you could fire a cloud of self propelled seeking warheads with just enough punch to shatter a missile on impact. they would have almost no range, adjacent only..and wouldnt do more than scuff the paint of a starship...but it would allow a ship to deal with those pesky missile swarms, and torpedo spreads.

 

[Condottiere]

Caster cluster concussion charge.

 

[wbnc]

Caster cluster concussion charge.

yeah something like that....a lot of times you dont have to invent entirely new systems or mechanics..you just add a new twist to an older system/mechanic