Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Space Warfare VI: Kinetics, Part 1

I see Whipple shields becoming the equivalent of r...

2011-01-14T21:33:26.719-08:00

I see Whipple shields becoming the equivalent of reactive armor. Modern missiles are designed with reactive armor in mind: they carry /two/ warheads. First one fires and either sets off the reactive armor or makes a small hole, then the second, bigger one fires and carves through the remaining armor. Similarly, one could mount a small warhead (either explosively formed penetrator or explosively propelled penetrator) which would then make a hole in the whipple shield. After that the main penetrator comes through and deals with the main ship.

Or one could take a page from modern infantry weapons and have your kinetic launchers fire bursts of 2-5 penetrators that all land on the same spot.

Я тоже бывало такое замечала, однако как-то заране...

2010-12-02T09:15:19.064-08:00

Я тоже бывало такое замечала, однако как-то заранее не придавала этому значения.

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2010-11-14T02:58:45.198-08:00

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What's that crap before me?: Jim, it's a ...

2010-10-05T06:12:28.314-07:00

What's that crap before me?:

Jim, it's a complicated failsafe you've come up with. You're making sure that the missile hits after it's been destroyed. Strange things happen in space...

Bookmarking.

Just a quick comment on the use of Lasers as PD ag...

2010-08-24T08:19:30.485-07:00

Just a quick comment on the use of Lasers as PD against KEW.

Consider a KEW projectile as primarily a rod at high velocity. As others have pointed out, adding a basic seeker with some delta-V could significantly improve your hit probability.

However, adding that sensor and engine means your KEW is now vulnerable to PD (which can easily kill your sensors).

However, killing a KEW projectile's sensor does not in anyway decrease the odds of it hitting the target! It just keeps the projectile from performing any course correction.

This also neatly counters the laser PD in flat space strategy of only shooting at projectiles with zero relative motion, since those with small relative motion must now also be targeted.

This leads to an obvious counter tactic of including a small charge to turn your single projectile into a shotgun round when it loses its sensing capability (hey, I'm being targeted by laser PD and will lose all course correction capability, better detonate so I still have a chance of hitting).

With a little thought, multiple charges could be included that could *directionally* detonate trying to throw the most mass in the right direction.

This tactic - counter-tactic should be a key component of any long lasting war (hot or cold).

Jim

Found this on for hypervelocity impacts: http://w...

2010-08-02T09:59:29.895-07:00

Found this on for hypervelocity impacts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXA-Gmf8z1A&feature=related
Sounds okay.

It probably won't be as easy to "lose&quo...

2009-08-30T13:14:47.582-07:00

It probably won't be as easy to "lose" a weapon as it is on Earth. Space combat will not have much in the way of fog of war because of drifting clouds of obscuring gun smoke, nor stormy weather or foggy weather, or even night-and-day, which make battles on Earth so fluid. That said, orbital battles are bound to be messy, and the more developed the orbit is (ie: a fledgling colony will not have the space infrastructure of an industrialized super-power) the more messy it will be.

However a radar blip on CBDR had better identify itself or it gets blown up.

Something that occures to me about space warfare i...

2009-08-30T11:40:08.210-07:00

Something that occures to me about space warfare in orbit, is that in the cluttered space, and high-tension enviornment, that it may be possible to 'lose' a chunk of debris or a kinetic round...historical accounts of combat are filled with those lucky (or unlucky) occurances that have resulted in a battle going in a completely different direction than expected.

Ferrell

Ferrell - Well, submarines are one of the two basi...

2009-08-29T15:49:11.564-07:00

Ferrell - Well, submarines are one of the two basic metaphors for space warcraft, the other one being aircraft. The stealth aspect of subs is obviously absent, but otherwise it is easy to imagine kinetic-armed space warcraft as rather like submarines from the crew's point of view.

"In kinetics-dominant combat that could be a ...

2009-08-28T22:36:56.732-07:00

"In kinetics-dominant combat that could be a primary tactic, perhaps the primary tactic. (Though it is expensive if you are using a lot of fairly complex guided weapons."

I got the idea from (of all things), submarine warfare--a 'full spred' of WWII torpedos to hit a high speed, very manuverable target used much the same principle. Time and velosity determine if and when you intercept another object. Dodge them or zap them, or both, you might wind up missing your 'mark' and the mission is a scrub. Miss the 'launch window' and your target is outside the range of your weapons; miss your 'burn' window and you can't intercept your target. A weapon not used is just as good (for you) as if your enemy didn't have one in the first place.

Ferrell

Luke - One probably counter-intuitive aspect of...

2009-08-28T17:45:33.744-07:00
Luke - One probably counter-intuitive aspect of kinetics warfare is that you don't launch your ordinance in the direction of the target ... You then launch your seekers perpendicular to your direction of motion

Yes.

Ferrell: That seems about right. Plausible near t...

2009-08-28T17:27:10.070-07:00
Ferrell: That seems about right. Plausible near to mid future kinetic warfare will probably involve high delta-V but low acceleration carrier spacecraft (likely propelled by plasma thrusters of some flavor) and low delta-V but high thrust seeker heads (probably chemfuel, and which may or may not be launched from a "gun" of some sort for an additional 2 to 3 km/s of delta-V). Thus, there will be a range where if you launch, it takes enough time for your seekers to drift to the intercept that the target can put on more delta-V than the seekers have available. Beyond this range, the target can avoid any singe seeker. To engage at longer ranges, as you say, you launch seekers in a spread so if the target evades one, it will move into a zone threatened by another.

One probably counter-intuitive aspect of kinetics warfare is that you don't launch your ordinance in the direction of the target. You are already flashing past at something like 10 to 30 km/s, adding an additional 2 to 5 km/s of velocity by shooting the munitions straight ahead will not do much. Instead, you set your course such that your spacecraft has a distance of closest approach of, say, 1000 km from the target (perhaps this keeps you out of laser range, and gives you the opportunity to dodge his kinetic munitions). You then launch your seekers perpendicular to your direction of motion, towards where the target will be when both of you pass the plane normal to your relative velocity vector. This gives you the greatest range, and keeps you the farthest from enemy weapons.

Going back to composition of the kinetic penetrators - in asteroidal material, the platinum group metals are much more common than on earth. Since platinum, iridium and osmium are the densest elements, perhaps the penetrator rods or buckshot or whatever will be made out of these metals. (Oh, and one correction, rhenium is also denser than tungsten, but then again, rhenium is also about as expensive as gold, so it doesn't help much).

Though in fairness (?), if the guy you want to nai...

2009-08-28T17:15:14.444-07:00
Though in fairness (?), if the guy you want to nail is in the tent or riding the donkey, the missile is cheap at the price. If he isn't, well, that's a failure of intelligence ... and yes, I'm aware of the implicit pun. :-)

Well some countries have been known to use several...

2009-08-28T15:40:28.242-07:00
Well some countries have been known to use several million dollars worth of guided missiles to destroy 50 dollars worth or tents and donkeys.

Or so I heard...

Ferrell - On one level that is the idea behind a k...

2009-08-28T15:37:10.234-07:00
Ferrell - On one level that is the idea behind a killer bus, or any fragmentation kinetic. But in that case it is only dealing with the final, unguided phase of flight after a target seeker has (presumably) been slagged by defensive fire, whether zaps or counter-kinetics.

But yes, the same principle could be applied to guided kinetics, firing them in a spread so that the target either has to take its chances or make an evasion burn that effectively takes it out of the fight.

In kinetics-dominant combat that could be a primary tactic, perhaps the primary tactic. (Though it is expensive if you are using a lot of fairly complex guided weapons.

Ok, I'm awake now! Just to shift the discussio...

2009-08-28T14:51:07.892-07:00
Ok, I'm awake now! Just to shift the discussion a bit, how about when you shoot kinetics at a ship, you shoot a whole pattern of them on an intercept course so that you either have to expend a LOT of manuvering fuel or risk getting hit by one of them, thus ruining your day. What do you all have to say about that?

Ferrell

That's what I get for relying on memory rather...

2009-08-28T14:08:01.420-07:00
That's what I get for relying on memory rather than checking my Mendeliev Table.

/slap self on fingers.

Jean Remy: Tungsten is denser than uranium: 19.25 ...

2009-08-28T13:55:50.777-07:00
Jean Remy: Tungsten is denser than uranium: 19.25 g/cm^3 for W compared to 19.1 g/cm^3 for U. Only gold, neptunium, plutonium, and the row 6 platinum group metals are denser than tungsten, and not by much - these are not used because of their cost (and, in some cases, strategic importance and radiological safety). Uranium is marginally better at punching through materials at 2 km/s because when it fails, it shears off into a self-sharpening point, rather than mushrooming into a blunt head as tungsten does, and thus preserves a narrow cross section to its target. It has an interesting side effect that the hot uranium powder produced spontaneously bursts into flame when exposed to oxygen, leading to interesting effects on the inside of armored vehicles after penetration. The self sharpening effect is irrelevant at orbital velocities, though, as the uranium just fluidizes like anything else.

The advantage of tungsten in a penetrator is its h...

2009-08-28T12:02:05.021-07:00
The advantage of tungsten in a penetrator is its hardness. The advantage of depleted uranium is its density, in the same spirit that lead is used for bullets, besides its low melting point, which made it malleable and allowed soldiers to fabricate bullets in the field--before the introduction of the cartridge soldiers in some armies were issued with a molding set. An armor-piercing bullet for example has a sleeve of steel over a lead core. Ideally a penetrating rod would be a sleeve of hard material (tungsten/steel) with a dense core (lead/uranium), to provide mass and increased kinetic energy.

However those are for relatively low-velocity projectiles. At orbital speeds the hardness is less of an issue since, as Rick says, all materials act fluidly: at the moment of impact matter becomes a plasma.

Ferrell: Your description of the effects of an arm...

2009-08-28T11:48:31.100-07:00
Ferrell: Your description of the effects of an armor piercing munition on an armored vehicle sounds about right, but the dynamics are a bit off. When uranium, for example, is not available, people use tungsten for their penetrators, and tungsten is the most refractory metal in existence - so clearly ease of vaporization is not a primary driving concern.

In any event, being on the other side of a bulkhead hit by a hypervelocity kinetic strike is not healthy. The cloud of plasma, vapor, condensed grit, and shattered fragments of bulkhead and penetrator will spray out in a hypervelocity cone, smashing anything in the way and producing an instant overpressure that acts like any explosive blast wave.

Mark - I gotta think about sloped armor. My first ...

2009-08-28T09:26:05.017-07:00
Mark - I gotta think about sloped armor. My first thought is that it offers no real advantage. Against laser, the thickness of armor WRT the beam path is critical, and the effective thickness of oblique armor is greater ... but in a sloped faceplate you're adding area as you decrease thickness, so it is a wash.

Against kinetics, at terrestrial speeds - whether a lance at 20 m/s or a shell at 1 km/s, sloped armor causes the impactor to bounce off, reducing effective impact force. But at more than a few km/s everything can be treated as a fluid, because impact energy is much greater than any material strength. So again the angle of impact doesn't really matter, and sloping still comes out as a wash.

I could easily be wrong, but that is my first thought.

If you're using thicker faceplate armor, slope...

2009-08-28T02:14:17.350-07:00
If you're using thicker faceplate armor, sloped armor for the faceplate would make sense as well, giving you a conical armored "bow" that you would turn into the attack. if you cover the rest of the hull in a Whipple shield with shutters or doors over the bits that need to be exposed and you suddenly have a surprisingly sleek looking warship.
-Mark

Rick- one, so I got the jump on your next post... ...

2009-08-27T22:19:53.292-07:00
Rick- one, so I got the jump on your next post...
two- that's what got me to thinking!
Three- you're welcome; I enjoy your TecTrends Monitor very much!
four- It's late here and I'm going to bed now...talk to you later!
Ferrell

Ferrell - On your first point, this relates to an ...

2009-08-27T21:50:01.089-07:00
Ferrell - On your first point, this relates to an issue I haven't dealt with at all here yet, whether the interior of manned combatant spacecraft is pressurized, or the crew suits up for combat.

Even if pressurized, though, large spacecraft with multiple compartments won't be quite as vulnerable as the very cramped interior of a tank.

On your second point, remember my 'accidental Orion' post a couple of weeks back? I hadn't made the connection, but that is certainly one compact way to give a projectile a very sudden and powerful kick!

Relating to neither point, but thanks for your comment over at TecTrends Monitor. Much appreciated on a new blog!

Ok, I've read both posts and sets of comment t...

2009-08-27T21:21:06.028-07:00
Ok, I've read both posts and sets of comment threads, so now I'll say something (hopefully intelligable): First, something that I heard from an engineer who worked on tank guns (bear with me; I'm a little fuzzy-it was 25 years ago); a penitrator rod is made out of a dense, but low-melting point metal. It also has an optimal length of about 3 to 17 times the cross-section, depending on relitive velocity, so that when it strikes the target, the leading surface is vaporized, but the momentium of the rod behind it pushes it into the target faster than the expandsion rate of the now-gasious metal. As the penitrator fully enters the armor, the gas (being as dense as the solid metal), decelerates throught the solid armor like a bullet through liquid; when it reaches the interior of it's target, the difference in pressure allows the gas penitrator to expand at sonic to supersonic speeds...while it is still traveling forward at about the speed of sound. This blast burns, pulverizes everything in its path, and incenderates all flammable objects inside the target; if the fire is hot enough and the compression just right and the oxygen levels remain high enough, you can conceviblly ignite an oxygen/nitrogen fire as well. And that's just what happens inside a tank, just before the turret blows off (a tank turret is 1/10 to 1/6 the total weight of a tank). So, now lets go back to when a simular round strikes a spacecraft.
At the point when the initial blast occures, one of two things will happen; either a seal, door/hatch, cover, seam, bulkhead/deck, or access panel will fail- in which case the fireball will enter some other space and do bad things to them. Then, all the air, smoke, debris, and what-have-you, will be pushed by pressure to escape out the hole the penitrator came in from. That escaping air will be bad (obscuring your sensors, depleting your breathing supplies, ect) and making part of your spacecraft unusable until you get around to fixing it. If you can. However, if the compartment that the penitrator enters does not fail, then all that flame will shoot out the hole in the hull EXACTLY like a rocket. This is so obviously bad that I'll let you use your imaginations to picture it...

Ok, enought time spent dwelling on that! Here is something else you can think about: Nuclear driven kinetic weapons. I read about them on Atomic Rockets; they are like the propulsion bomb-units from an Orion (1950s version), or bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, but instead of a lasing array, they have a sheet of material that is super-heated and deformed into a bolt or 'spear' of plasma. (oh, no, a 'practical' plasma weapon...) Depending on the material and the thickness of the sheet, it could travel at hundreds (or even a couple of thousand) kilometers per second and have as little as a fraction of a degree of beam devergence. And, I'm sure, the pulse would glow like a lighthouse on fire, not to mention the flash from the where the nuclear detonation vaporizes the casing. Imagine the surprise of the ememy ship when that thing goes off just before it reaches their defensive-fire range! Just 'grazing' your Whipple shield would still put you in a world of hurt when the transfer energy causes it to explode. A 'shaped nuclear charge' indeed!
Well, just some thoughts...

Ferrell