Which top me says it would be very susceptible to various forms of jamming like even at the crudest level to dump out some hydrogen bombs and that there would be relativistic effects. This could get horribly complex very quickly.
What is the CEP of traveller beam weapons?
- Thread starter warwizard
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Which top me says it would be very susceptible to various forms of jamming like even at the crudest level to dump out some hydrogen bombs and that there would be relativistic effects. This could get horribly complex very quickly.
Umm, I'm talking about outer space so, no you. Can't hide your IR. And, no. At missile speeds there isn't relativistic matters that effect the accuracy.
IR is em radiation. So, speed, dispesal, masking, et al, are 100% known for outerspace. YOU simply didn't take physical science in Jr High or H.S. hence your uncertainty.
There is an excellent website that'll answer all these questions for you. Atomicrockets.com I think. No physics edu required.
yeah, only took four years of science before getting an engineering degree. yes there are relativistic issues and yes em can be masked and yes, battles can take place anywhere.
any other questions?
nothing is 100% known, it's all either known unknowns or unknown unknowns. if all it was about was em, then you could mask in a solar wind.
I figure it is best to actually throw some real life up here:
Jammers blind the missile to the target aircraft by bathing the seeker head with intense infrared radiation that washes out the aircraft’s own signature. The comparison of the jamming energy to the aircraft’s energy is commonly expressed as the J-to-S ratio. J is the strength of the jamming signal and S is the strength of an aircraft’s signature. “You need to have a larger J than the S to be effective,” says Pledger. “You need to put out more energy than the signature of the target to effectively jam the missile.”
By pulsing energy like a powerful strobe light, jamming devices fool missile guidance systems by projecting extra ons and offs into a missile’s infrared detector , breaking up the target processing. Once a manpad’s lock has been broken and the missile has overshot the target, the seeker’s field of view is too small for the missile to reacquire the target.
Different types of jamming countermeasures trade power and effective range with other factors. Omni-directional lamps operate continuously and create entire hemispheres of protective jamming, though their signal at any given point in the sky is relatively weak. And because they send out a constant torrent of energy, they use a lot of electrical power. Directed systems are more effective and more energy efficient, using focused beams directed at a particular sector of the sky or lasers pointed at the seeker head. Pledger says directed beams can have a J-to-S ratio of between 2:1 and 50:1, while lasers can be 300 to 2,000 times more powerful than their host aircraft’s signature. But the pointing feature of directed systems requires complex missile detection hardware. Multiple threats and highly maneuverable supersonic missiles are a challenge for directed systems.
http://www.airspacemag.com/how-things-work/infrared.html?c=y&page=2
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/electronics/q0191.shtml
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The whole premise of the diameter of error is assuming that the target can be "anyplace" in that diameter, and for the majority of cases, that's simply not true.
The target is on a vector. You pretty much KNOW where it will be. Ships do not change direction over 10ths of a second. In order for that 6G ship to change course, it needs to turn that 6G drive opposite the direction it wants to change to. Even a gimbaled drive does not turn that quickly, and, at least illustrated, Traveller drives don't look gimbaled at all.
In order to turn the ship, it will need some very powerful attitude thrusters if it wants to change that direction, and STOP the change in direction, at all quickly.
10 hex range is a light second. The data you have on the vessel will be 1s old when it is received by the sensors, and if the laser were fired instantly, it will arrive 1 second later.
That means that the ship must change direction, fairly radically, on a sub-second basis in order to get out of the way of the lasers that are tracking him.
Aircraft simply move small wings to instigate direction change, and the atmosphere does the rest. Thus aircraft tend to maneuver quickly.
The ship, in contrast has to move faster than the gun mount can track. If the gun mount has a reasonable rate of fire (and in TNE you can "over power" them to get 10x the ROF), then the gun mount simply tracks your ship, and puts the lasers where it thinks you will be in 1s time. Odds are, eventually, your ship will not be able to react in time, or the tracking ships pattern matching software will start making high probability guesses as to where the ship will be as it jinks, and 1s is all the mount needs to get a hit on the target.
Obviously, as you get closer, the reaction and tracking time significantly reduces until, especially with larger ships, they simply can't move themselves out of the way in time.
The target is on a vector. You pretty much KNOW where it will be. Ships do not change direction over 10ths of a second. In order for that 6G ship to change course, it needs to turn that 6G drive opposite the direction it wants to change to. Even a gimbaled drive does not turn that quickly, and, at least illustrated, Traveller drives don't look gimbaled at all.
In order to turn the ship, it will need some very powerful attitude thrusters if it wants to change that direction, and STOP the change in direction, at all quickly.
10 hex range is a light second. The data you have on the vessel will be 1s old when it is received by the sensors, and if the laser were fired instantly, it will arrive 1 second later.
That means that the ship must change direction, fairly radically, on a sub-second basis in order to get out of the way of the lasers that are tracking him.
Aircraft simply move small wings to instigate direction change, and the atmosphere does the rest. Thus aircraft tend to maneuver quickly.
The ship, in contrast has to move faster than the gun mount can track. If the gun mount has a reasonable rate of fire (and in TNE you can "over power" them to get 10x the ROF), then the gun mount simply tracks your ship, and puts the lasers where it thinks you will be in 1s time. Odds are, eventually, your ship will not be able to react in time, or the tracking ships pattern matching software will start making high probability guesses as to where the ship will be as it jinks, and 1s is all the mount needs to get a hit on the target.
Obviously, as you get closer, the reaction and tracking time significantly reduces until, especially with larger ships, they simply can't move themselves out of the way in time.
You probably mean Winchell Chung's Project Rho site, at http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/ .
By all means, please post a direct link to a page that explains exactly how a easy it is to detect a point source with a flux density (at detector) of 1e-15 W/m². You were the one making that claim, it's your job to prove it. And please directly explain how easy it is to make a full sky survey from a moving spacecraft in order to detect this energy source.
Incidentally the flux density from the star Alpha Centauri, which is about 4.3 lightyears (~ 270,000 AU) away, is about eight orders of magnitude (100 million times) brighter that our 1 gigawatt reactor at 1 AU (again, assuming the star's entire luminosity is in the infrared, which it isn't). So a reactor is hardly going to stand out from the background stars either.
Even at 100,000 km range, a 1 gigawatt reactor would have a flux density of 0.000000008 W/m². While that's about a million times more powerful than it is at 1 AU, that's still utterly miniscule.
Those are the numbers. That is the problem that needs to be solved. How do you propose that a sensor (a) has the sensitivity to detect such a paltry source of radiation, and (b) knows where to look for it? On top of that we also have the sensor's ability to track it, which also requires exquisitely sensitive tracking hardware.
And of course, the reactor example assumes that the energy is radiating out equally in all directions. If it is somehow focussed (e.g. a drive plume), then it's even less likely to be visible unless the detector is directly in the path of the output.
Assuming that a ship (as described in Traveller) always emits enough radiation to be detectable at interplanetary distances is simply false. And even if it was, assuming that the detector can necessarily know where to look is also false.
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Once you go and receive a high school level edu in physical science, I'd be more than happy to continue.
:rofl:
Everything you've said here so far demonstrates very clearly that you're the one who knows very little about the subject, and simply declaring that everyone who argues against your blanket statements, paper-thin one-liner logic and lack of evidence is "uneducated" or lacks high school education is highly insulting, rude, presumptuous and arrogant of you. People are taking the time to explain themselves and their logic and their calculations using basic (and slightly more advanced) science, and all you're doing is dismissing them out of hand and claiming that they're wrong without demonstrating how or why, or presenting anything better.
If you want to prove that you know anything about the subject (let alone more than others), show it by presenting the calculations yourself that demonstrate your point. Nobody's hiding behind qualifications or how much education they have or haven't got here, we're just doing the required calculations. The fact that you don't (and refuse to) tells us that you don't really know anything about the subject at all.
But go on. Give us another dismissive one-liner. :rofl:
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Maybe you should explain again how IR can't be jammed, since all other sources disagree. It will be good for a laugh at least.
If the ship wants to completely change its vector that's probably true. But a simple left/right/up/down thrust component can also change the vector, regardless of how fast it is accelerating. A short lateral burst with maneuvering thrusters could change the direction its motion vector is pointing in sufficiently (very slightly, perhaps, but that could be enough to make a difference).
That said, one has to wonder at the effects of antigravity or grav drives on a spaceship's inertia.
Well, since I never stated it could can't be jammed ever (reading comprehension is important) I'll explain how it could be done.
You could, from the target, target all the IR sensors, PRECISELY, with a beam to overload them. It would have to be continuous and EXACTLY targeted from the target point to the attacking sensor. So, while it could be done in space, it won't be done by a missile.
Do you understand?
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And how does the jammer know where the sensors are? How much energy do you think such a beam would need at the source? What do you think the probability of hitting the sensors precisely would be?
(more to the point, what's the use in jamming IR when there are other wavelengths or means to detect the target that could be used instead?)
Still waiting for your evidence, BTW.
My original offer still stands.
I've presented my data in several posts. You present your evidence that it's wrong. In detail. In your next post, if you will.
Failure to do so will be an admission on your part that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Actually you did say you can't hide your IR signature, I understand that.
So now that you have learned a valuble lesson; you should also take into account the brightness of the star nearby as it will be giving an IR density of radiation (don't forget the distance from the star as well). Also you should figure the albedo of any planetary bodies as they will be reflecting IR.
Then think that a ship could eject a body of plasma into the missile's path, effectively like a flare, similar to our stone-age tech now.
Sensors are more likely to be far in advance of today, most likely if I had to guess, they will be detecting mass distortions in the fabric of space.
Yeah, me too, but I figuring if some the ones here can't get the simple idea through their head that if the things we can do today in weapons will be far advanced in the future that the things we do today to confound those weapons will be advanced as well.
Not to mention adapted to the environment used: space.
So I figured another table simulating all the pseudo-logic they are using to say that NOTHING can spoof the future weapon sensor - let alone - the easiest of all to mess with: heat sensing, well, then they might stop just saying "IT CAN"T BE DONE!" and let those of us with imagination and logic alone to figure out the rules to make it happen.
What ARE you babbling about? 1st, you don't ACTUALLY read my posts but, put words into my mouth, now that strange comment.
Slow down, engage brain, THEN post if you want replies.
There are quite probably millions of asteroids out there that are similar in mass to a ship that would give you quite a confusing picture. And as far as we can tell, gravity (or at least information about changes in space-time distortion) also travels at the speed of light like EM radiation.
Granted, most asteroids won't be emitting other forms of radiation though
. Incidentally, neutrinos from a fusion reaction will also be emitted radially, so even if one could distinguish the neutrinos from a ship's fusion reactor from the background noise emitted by the local star (and other reactors, not to mention the ship's own reactor which is right next to the neutrino detector), there probably wouldn't be enough to actually be detectable at interplanetary distances anyway.
Thinking about it, this does give reason behind the dTons of the computers to say it isn't just the processor. "Commo" could just be catch all for the EW/Communications/Sensors personnel that would be very important on a warship.
Hmmm a list of sensor types would be good...special supplement three comes to mind.
1. Radio Receiver w/ a) active or b) passive
2. Infrared Sensor
3. Mass Sensor
4. Neutrino Sensor
These seem to be the five main types, there are others listed however so maybe a sixth could be added as non-standard. Huh, that is the begining of a matrix, Traveller d6 style.
Give up, it's over, you were wrong, leave it at that and move on.
