Shipkiller Missile

"Shipkiller" Missile

   A Shipkiller Missile is the primary naval anti-ship missile used by the Confederacy. It is approximately 55 centimeters in diameter and roughly 2 meters long. While other variants were developed, when first put into service it did not have an active warhead; it relied solely upon the kinetic energy transferred by the most mass possible impacting the target. The original warhead consisted of 24 40-kg tungsten 'slivers' separated by a layer of lead for a total missile weight of roughly one metric tonne.
   The original booster was described in general terms as accelerating the missile at 100g for 100 seconds. With 'g' being roughly 9.81 m/s, 100g was an acceleration of 981 m/s, and that acceleration for 100 seconds gave the missile a final velocity of 98 Km/sec assuming all observers were at rest. Any closing velocity between launcher and target would only increase this closing speed. The missile covered approximately 4900 Km during this 'boost' phase and actively homed until the booster cut out. After cutout, the missile was only a ballistic projectile which could be dodged.
   The kinetic energy held by a 1-tonne (1000 kg) mass traveling at 100 Km/sec is 4.81x10^12 Joules. In nuclear weapons, the term 'kiloton of TNT' is defined as 4.184 x10^12 Joules. However, the energy developed by nuclear weapon is radiated in all directions equally. If the nuke is in contact with a structure in a vacuum, much of the energy is dissipated to space. In contrast, 100% of the energy developed by a tonne of tungsten colliding with a structure at 98 Km/sec is transferred to the structure regardless of where it is or if it's in vacuum or not. Further, all that energy is applied to a circle about 55 cm across. Generally, when this happens, the 55 cm section of hull or armor becomes a part of the warhead and enters the ship's interior as additional fragments.
   The lead separating the slivers provided a weak enough binder that any impact would make the warhead fragment. If the missile was approaching its target close enough to draw defensive fire, the warhead was easy to break up. However, this meant the warhead was now a cone of 24 separate warheads, each one traveling at the same velocity as the original missile. Thus, for the smaller Sa'arm ships it was better to leave the missile alone and accept the chance of getting hit by the one impact instead of breaking it up and almost ensuring getting hit by two or five or eight slivers. Either way, if any part of the missile struck the smaller Sa'arm ships, that ship was damaged enough to call it a 'mission kill'. Unfortunately, the larger Sa'arm ships had shields and multiple layers of armor and redundant systems. It frequently took multiple hits to destroy the larger Sa'arm warships.

Platforms

Patrician Class Corvette
Semmes Strike Cruiser
F105 Bomber
PBY Long-Endurance Patrol Bomber

Capabilities

Longer range than Sa'arm beam weapons

Story Usage

A textual analysis of the story repository, current as of 9/2019 and performed on 2019-12-28 and using SS Lib ver 1.16.07 (10/21/2019) identified the following usage counts for Shipkiller:

Ending This Mess by Zen Master (Timeline month: 164) 6 instances.
First Cruise of Lt. Steward by John Lewiston 4 instances.
Independent Command by Zen Master (Timeline month: 72) 2 instances.
The Troubled Celestial River by SGTStoner 2 instances.

References

The following quotes were taken from the stories archive documenting how this story element has been handled using get_refs.py v1.0 9/9/2019.

From Patrol Commander by Zen Master

None of our missiles had any sort of active warhead; the business end was simply the most massive lump of tungsten slivers that the missile's drive could push, with a layer of lead between each sliver.  The lead added mass while ensuring that the tungsten slivers separated at any outside influence.

and

If the Sa'arm patrol ship hit the missile with one of their beam weapons while it was far enough out, the missile was likely to miss.  However, they were coming in fast and the usual result was the missile separating into twenty-four slivers and most of them still hitting the ship.  When that happened, instead of a huge hole behind the hit and complete destruction behind the entry hole, the ship ended up with a half-dozen or more smaller holes with complete destruction behind each one.  Instead of a broken ship with half the crew still alive, they got a wreck with very few survivors.
We loved those missiles.  They could not home and had limited boost range and could be dodged once they stopped boosting, but when they hit they were awesome.  What we didn't like was that they were launched by our smallest ships, almost just boats.  The Patricians were horribly cramped.  They were also incredibly fragile and almost helpless if an enemy made it within gun range.

From Independent Command by Zen Master

As usual, the AI's video records of everything on the ship made tracking down the truth very easy.  Fuck, that was close.  Our missiles have been standardized on 55 cm diameter, or 21" if you are American.  Think submarine torpedo or several different surface-launched missiles which are nominally 21".  By the time those things have accelerated (to use nice round numbers, assume 100g for 100 seconds) to burnout, they are moving so fast that an explosive warhead is completely redundant.  Instead, they have as much of a sensor package and brain as we can fit, as all that kinetic energy is wasted if they miss.

and

All of our ships needed self-guided missiles that could swat incoming small craft.  They didn't need the 55 cm shipkillers that the Patricians had, because those were far larger than needed to kill small craft.  They weren't big enough to kill larger ships, unless you could get several hits at long range after full acceleration, and that appeared to be a losing game.  _If_ they hit they did a lot of damage, but they could be seen coming, they could be intercepted, and after burnout they could be dodged.  And, the smaller ships could only carry a few of these larger missiles.

From Ending This Mess by Zen Master

For offense, we gave the craft a single 55 cm shipkiller missile, like the old torpedo bombers, and added a light Particle Beam mount for close-in defense.  Okay, the PB mount was really just there to make the crew feel better, and they knew it.  The Sa’arm didn’t have anything that that weapon could knock out, except maybe their own bombers and the Plasma Torpedos that the Dickhead bombers were armed with.  We also gave them the Confederacy’s old “nav shield”, the original shield we had started with before we figured out how to improve it.

and

More Snakes, yes, but with our first run’s problems all fixed during construction.  We also lengthened them just a little, and added a battery of eight 55 cm shipkiller missile launchers in their nose.  Adding missile launchers gave us more options than just having the guns.  Putting them in the middle where we had originally planned would move the turrets farther from the center of mass and add stability problems for no good reason.

From Fly By by akarge

After a bit, the mid-course stage of the missiles kicked in, accelerating them through the thinning cloud of ribbons.  Now the missiles could see the targets, not only because they were closer, but also because they could detect the lasers firing at the Mylar cloud.  The final phase kicked on; thirty seconds with active homing sensors.  They were well inside the envelope and would probably not miss, IF they made it that far.  For some reason, even with junky sensors, Swarm ships were very good at missile defense.  A flurry of lasers and particle accelerators tracked and destroyed the first missile.  It was now a cloud of debris that would move close, but not close enough to strike the target.  The second missile took a hit that killed the drive but left the missile intact.  It would miss, to continue on as a one-ton stray bullet.

Shipkiller Missile

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