|
Post by fallingaggressively on Sept 16, 2017 5:38:18 GMT
So, if an ir imaging seeker would be able to determine that a flare is not the original target due to having a different spectral signature, how do you go about fooling it?
Would this require a decoy with the same signature as the ship? And would it be possible to make such a decoy cheap enough to be viable?
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Sept 16, 2017 9:08:31 GMT
So, if an ir imaging seeker would be able to determine that a flare is not the original target due to having a different spectral signature, how do you go about fooling it? Would this require a decoy with the same signature as the ship? And would it be possible to make such a decoy cheap enough to be viable? Blinding the seeker or burning it with a laser seems a valid method. IR-camera blinding lasers are already used in some aircraft as an alternative to conventional flares AFAIK.
|
|
|
Post by fallingaggressively on Sept 16, 2017 10:00:42 GMT
Destroying the seeker is always going to be an option, but is it a realistic one? I can't help but think that you could design the optic so that if it detected an attack it would close a shutter to protect itself or something to that effect. As to blinding, isn't that still defeated by spectrum analysis?
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Sept 16, 2017 11:34:09 GMT
Destroying the seeker is always going to be an option, but is it a realistic one? I can't help but think that you could design the optic so that if it detected an attack it would close a shutter to protect itself or something to that effect. As to blinding, isn't that still defeated by spectrum analysis? If a shutter closes, your laser will simply weld it closed. So the seeker is disabled (until repairs) either way. Blinding can be defeated by spectrum analysis. This assumes the laser has insufficient intensity to simply melt the fotodetectors though. Fotodetectors will remain a lot more vulnerable than armour the way I see it.
|
|
|
Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Sept 16, 2017 11:40:42 GMT
You might not be able to afford a laser that can melt even sensors on missiles hundreds of kilometers away, since you need a wider beam to hit the tiny sensor on the missile. You'd also need to be able to take down hundreds of seeker heads in a fairly short time, otherwise you're just going to thin the salvo a little, not disable it entirely. This means you can't really afford to use capital lasers to melt missiles, since you can buy thousands of missiles at the price of one laser.
|
|
|
Post by Enderminion on Sept 16, 2017 12:19:36 GMT
also Radar seekers can be behind the armour
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Sept 16, 2017 12:25:40 GMT
also Radar seekers can be behind the armour Those have a range of only a few hundred km though.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Sept 16, 2017 12:33:45 GMT
You might not be able to afford a laser that can melt even sensors on missiles hundreds of kilometers away, since you need a wider beam to hit the tiny sensor on the missile. You'd also need to be able to take down hundreds of seeker heads in a fairly short time, otherwise you're just going to thin the salvo a little, not disable it entirely. This means you can't really afford to use capital lasers to melt missiles, since you can buy thousands of missiles at the price of one laser. How accurate your weapon fire is depends for a large part on your sensor resolution. Because momentum wheels can be ridiculously precise, and our lasers have high intensities even at 10 Mm, sensor precision would seem to be the main limitation of laser precision (IRL). Furthermore, electronics are much more temperature-sensitive than metal or ceramic (or even ablative) armour. So a much lower intensity is required. And about economics: the game doesn't take manufacturing costs into account (which would hit missiles the hardest of all weapons), the game doesn't use a persistent fleet (ammo consumption,damage to ships and ships lost doesn't make a difference for the next mission) and non-military uses are not mentioned in the game. And my laser doesn't need to be cost-effective against a missile swarm, my laserstar needs to be cost-effective against an arsenal ship. Not having the juice to run a MPDT will bloat your ship's mass and cost.
|
|
|
Post by Enderminion on Sept 16, 2017 13:06:11 GMT
also Radar seekers can be behind the armour Those have a range of only a few hundred km though. aganist nearly imobile laserstars that is more then enough
|
|
|
Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Sept 16, 2017 13:23:23 GMT
You might not be able to afford a laser that can melt even sensors on missiles hundreds of kilometers away, since you need a wider beam to hit the tiny sensor on the missile. You'd also need to be able to take down hundreds of seeker heads in a fairly short time, otherwise you're just going to thin the salvo a little, not disable it entirely. This means you can't really afford to use capital lasers to melt missiles, since you can buy thousands of missiles at the price of one laser. How accurate your weapon fire is depends for a large part on your sensor resolution. Because momentum wheels can be ridiculously precise, and our lasers have high intensities even at 10 Mm, sensor precision would seem to be the main limitation of laser precision (IRL). Furthermore, electronics are much more temperature-sensitive than metal or ceramic (or even ablative) armour. So a much lower intensity is required. And about economics: the game doesn't take manufacturing costs into account (which would hit missiles the hardest of all weapons), the game doesn't use a persistent fleet (ammo consumption,damage to ships and ships lost doesn't make a difference for the next mission) and non-military uses are not mentioned in the game. And my laser doesn't need to be cost-effective against a missile swarm, my laserstar needs to be cost-effective against an arsenal ship. Not having the juice to run a MPDT will bloat your ship's mass and cost. I don't know of any sensor tech that can make out a tiny sensor hole on the hull of a ship 10k kilometers away though. IR can see the exhaust yes, but not much else.
|
|
|
Post by bigbombr on Sept 16, 2017 15:15:53 GMT
I don't know of any sensor tech that can make out a tiny sensor hole on the hull of a ship 10k kilometers away though. IR can see the exhaust yes, but not much else. You assume sensors will be small? I assume they will be as large as practical to extend their range as much as possible. The hole reason we have sandblasters (low mass, maximum muzzle velocity) is because in space, range (and precision) win. Thus, you'd want to detect your opponent from as far as possible and track them as accurately as possible. This means that sensors will increase in size to keep pace with increased weapon range. Missiles don't need sensors all that large, but because of the relatively small size of the frontal cross section, sensors will take up a large fraction of the forward area. Just aim for the tip of the missile and you'll hit something vital (either a sensor, or if none present, the warhead, cooking it off).
|
|
|
Post by newageofpower on Sept 16, 2017 15:43:12 GMT
I don't know of any sensor tech that can make out a tiny sensor hole on the hull of a ship 10k kilometers away though. IR can see the exhaust yes, but not much else. You assume sensors will be small? I assume they will be as large as practical to extend their range as much as possible. The hole reason we have sandblasters (low mass, maximum muzzle velocity) is because in space, range (and precision) win. Thus, you'd want to detect your opponent from as far as possible and track them as accurately as possible. This means that sensors will increase in size to keep pace with increased weapon range. Missiles don't need sensors all that large, but because of the relatively small size of the frontal cross section, sensors will take up a large fraction of the forward area. Just aim for the tip of the missile and you'll hit something vital (either a sensor, or if none present, the warhead, cooking it off). Personally, I believe we'll have a combination of gigantic (but vulnerable/fragile) sensors on specialist platforms, hardened (but somewhat less capable) protected sensors on ships-of-the-line (that is, if Apophys is wrong and we ever use crewed ships in combat) and masses of sensors optimized for cheapness/effectiveness mounted on drone swarms.
|
|
|
Post by fallingaggressively on Sept 16, 2017 18:34:43 GMT
Qswitched really did his homework. So the to make the sensor hardened, you narrow the band to shorter IR wavelengths which then require more energy to fry the sensor, but in doing so limits the ability of the sensor to pick a flare from a ship. I guess that means that sensor hardening, and how tough you can make them, is what will ultimately determine what seeker to use and what its defeat mechanism will be.
What is the cut-off point I wonder? And will creative design allow work-arounds. If I had both hard and soft sensors in the seeker then could I leave the soft one protected until the hardend one is confused? Fusing a shutter, or other protective system, shut with a laser also sounds like something that could be designed out.
Sufficient size nuke would still fry them wouldn't it?.
|
|
|
Post by apophys on Sept 16, 2017 21:17:30 GMT
fallingaggressively There is no need to rely exclusively on one type of sensor. Separate hardened sensors for different wavelengths will still provide complete data when combined. Yes, this means you spend more mass and cost, but you could take that trade. Also, I'm thinking mostly about sensors that piggyback off of laser mirror apertures, which give them huge effective size (on the order of 10 m radius) for not much mass and cost over the existing laser infrastructure. A pulsed laser can dedicate its mirror to sensors in the time it isn't firing, so you don't even need to stop shooting to get updated sensor data.
|
|
|
Post by fallingaggressively on Sept 17, 2017 3:08:19 GMT
When Enderminion said the radar could be behind armour I thought that multiple sensors in one package would be a prudent move but it does complicate the thought experiment considerably!
So then, how to spoof or jam a hardened multiband IR image spectrum analyser?
Raspberry?
|
|