aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83 
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Post by aiyel on Aug 20, 2016 16:34:48 GMT
It seems to me that having missiles be solely heat seeking is a flaw.
There's far more ways to guide a missile in real life than that, including infrared imaging seekers like those used in air-launched antitank missiles (which could be programmed to seek a specific part of a ship and not just the hottest, and which are also less vulnerable to decoys), as well as semi-active or active radar guidance, laser spot seeking or laser/radar beam riding (assuming the guiding vessel is close enough that light speed lag isn't an issue) or a datalink command guidance simular to how drones must function given their immunity to decoys.
Also, what about cluster missiles? Am interesting tabletop wargame calied Attack Vector, which also tried for a hard science approach to space combat had missiles that would separate into multiple payloads similar to a MIRV, with either independently guided kinetic kill rounds or free floating proximity detonated nukes with an accompanying cloud of inflatable decoys which would look identical to the bombs on sensors
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Post by qswitched on Aug 20, 2016 18:34:39 GMT
Explanation in this blog post: childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/Short version is that every other technique has a countermeasure and a counter-countermeasure, and so on. However, IR homing is the method that is always guaranteed to have a target because of the heat radiators. Cluster missiles can be somewhat created by adding a launcher to a missile (since you can put any system on any other system). It's a little clunky, but you can also somewhat make a multistage missile in this way too. |
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Aug 20, 2016 19:56:36 GMT
Okay, it makes sense, but I think radar could still be useful. Yes, ECM is a thing, but it's also a thing with mass and energy requirements. Radar absorbent materials are also both relatively fragile (thus useless as armor and vulnerable to damage from sources that would otherwise be negligible concern) and not insignificant in mass. About the most effective defense in a space environment (at a glance without running the numbers) would be chaff, which is light weight and easy to dispense, but even modern missiles are resistant to being spoofed by chaff alone. Typically it takes a combination of chaff, jamming, and hard maneuver and the distraction is momentary before the chaff cloud dissipated into uselessness.
I imagine that a good defensive option would be drones that carry ECM equipment and chaff seeded throughout the fleet a few minutes before the engagement in an attempt to turn the entire fleet into one big cloud of jamming and radar reflective bis of metal.
I'm not saying there aren't counters to radar guidance, but those counters aren't free, and this should probably be taken into account.
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Post by Crazy Tom on Aug 20, 2016 20:19:08 GMT
I'd be totally down with the increased tactical complexity of having ECM and ECCM. I can imagine fleets of mixed missiles - flak missiles supported by ECM and ECCM drones to confuse PD fire control and in turn try to cut through the enemy's countermeasures.
On the topic of cluster missiles, I'd like some sort of mechanical or cold gas separation charge instead of a launcher. Even with the highest reload speeds, launchers still only fire one sub-munition at a time, which is areal problem when you're closing on a target and you need that salvo now.
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Post by panarchist on Sept 5, 2016 16:55:23 GMT
Explanation in this blog post: childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/Short version is that every other technique has a countermeasure and a counter-countermeasure, and so on. However, IR homing is the method that is always guaranteed to have a target because of the heat radiators. Cluster missiles can be somewhat created by adding a launcher to a missile (since you can put any system on any other system). It's a little clunky, but you can also somewhat make a multistage missile in this way too. Technically IR has a countermeasure in terms of flares, or any thermal source larger than the target. Does the game take into account sensor blinding from lasers? |
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Post by qswitched on Sept 5, 2016 18:22:13 GMT
Technically IR has a countermeasure in terms of flares, or any thermal source larger than the target. Does the game take into account sensor blinding from lasers? Currently, no, because sensors attuned to hundred megawatt radiators will have very high tolerances (not very sensitive at all). In order to field a laser that can blind a sensor like that, you need radiators to dump even more heat than the laser, which makes for a bigger target. There are ways around this, but a much cheaper technique is just via thermal flares, which is what is used in game. |
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Post by princesskibble on Sept 5, 2016 22:48:19 GMT
Radar homing is used by a lot of real missiles thou, so it must be fairly effective even when faced with countermeasures, right?
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Post by RA2lover on Sept 6, 2016 0:18:43 GMT
Radar is relatively easy to counter with chaff.
Another problem with radar is energy consumption. With an IR sensor you can get 1/distance^2 of the target's radiated energy. With radar, you need 1/distance^4 as you need to get 1/distance^2 energy back from a target you're throwing 1/distance^2 energy at using your radar transmitter(and that's for active radar homing). You have the advantage of being able to send more energy in short duration pulses, but that reduces how often you can get target information and gets beaten by IR over longer distances.
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Post by qswitched on Sept 6, 2016 0:19:25 GMT
It's covered in the blog post (posting again: childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/), in that radar is competitive with heat homing in atmosphere because there are no giant radiators on aircraft, and the ambient temperature is so much higher. In space, heat is the dominant method of tracking/homing. That doesn't invalidate radar, radar is still effective in space, just in terms of cost and mass, IR tracking is the number one method, and hardest to make countermeasures for. |
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Sept 6, 2016 2:02:25 GMT
It's covered in the blog post (posting again: childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/sensors-and-countermeasures/), in that radar is competitive with heat homing in atmosphere because there are no giant radiators on aircraft, and the ambient temperature is so much higher. In space, heat is the dominant method of tracking/homing. That doesn't invalidate radar, radar is still effective in space, just in terms of cost and mass, IR tracking is the number one method, and hardest to make countermeasures for. So what about Imaging IR sensors that can better distinguish a decoy from the real thing? It's one of the many ways that modern heat seekers use to defeat flares, in that given sufficient tracking time they can determine which is the aircraft and which is the flare because a flare might be hotter and brighter, but it doesn't really look much like a plane. the distraction flares provide agianst such seekers is momentary, and must be combined with maneuvers to get the aircraft out of the seeker's range or to achieve a kinematic kill agianst the missile by forcing it to waste maneuver energy needed to achieve intercept. |
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Post by qswitched on Sept 6, 2016 3:19:53 GMT
Right, there is a certain technology escalation in all manners of sensors and countermeasures. With IR sensors with better determination, you can develop decoy flares with better decoying (burning carbon, for instance, yields a very radiator-like signature). Additionally, retracting radiators in at the same time as launching decoy flares can further muddy a missile's seeking ability. As can suddenly stopping the engine or starting the engine as soon as the decoys launch. Another decoy method that I've seen some players use is launching missiles at the same time as decoys to further add the missile engine signature to the mix (similarly, the missile can be accelerated at the enemy missile which will enhance the signal heavily).
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Post by quarkster on Sept 27, 2016 15:08:39 GMT
Technically IR has a countermeasure in terms of flares, or any thermal source larger than the target. Does the game take into account sensor blinding from lasers? Currently, no, because sensors attuned to hundred megawatt radiators will have very high tolerances (not very sensitive at all). In order to field a laser that can blind a sensor like that, you need radiators to dump even more heat than the laser, which makes for a bigger target. There are ways around this, but a much cheaper technique is just via thermal flares, which is what is used in game. No, because the laser is pulsed and the radiator isn't, and the radiators are radiating pretty much evenly throughout space while the laser is focusing all of that energy in an angular space much smaller relative to a sphere than your efficiency loss (i.e. with 5% efficiency the laser's spot size only needs to be smaller than 4pi/19 steradians to be brighter than the radiator without pulsing). And as a sanity check, lasers can actually explode things, whereas the heat from the radiators is negligible at laser engagement ranges. It stands to reason then that a considerably less powerful laser (or the same laser at greater distance) would still dump a ton of heat on a sensor, way more than you're going to get from the radiator. |
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feld
New Member
Posts: 45
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Post by feld on Oct 8, 2016 15:07:16 GMT
Qswitched,
-Does your model take into account masking of radiators from the missile by the hull of the ship?
-What IR background temperature does your missile seeker algorithm use? 2.7K?
v/r
feld
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