Missile Launchers

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Missile Launchers

(The author of this page deleted the wiki article on "Missiles" and put this in its place.&nbsp: He appears to not differentiate between "missiles', a self-propelled munition, and 'launchers', the equipment used to store, aim, program, and launch a missile.  In my opinion, the munition is more interesting than the launcher.   If he wants a page listing assorted launchers, that's fine with me but I want my Missiles page that discusses the assorted MISSILES back. -ZM)

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Missile launchers are a largely undocumented feature of Confederacy weaponry, but appear regularly in stories. There appears to be several variants:

Missile Launcher Types

Ground Combat Missile Launchers

  • SPT-301 Missile Launcher that appears to be part of an MLRS-style system mounted on an armored vehicle
  • Sabet Missile Launcher, which seems to be a fixed launcher that can fire a Sabet P Missile or a Sabet HE Missile (yes, that's the way its spelled by Cat5)
  • 37mm Missile Launcher, an infantry weapons with a five-shot capacity effective against light vehicles.

Small Craft Missiles

  • an unspecified system used with the F105 Star Arrow

Space Combat Missile Launchers

  • 55cm Internal Missile Launcher - A launcher internal to a vessel, usually fed from a magazine.  Commonly found in dedicated warship designs.
  • 55cm External Missile Launcher - A launcher external to a vessel, usually nothing more than mounting clamps and control/programming/safety attachments.  Commonly used by small-craft like bombers and vessels converted to warfare.
  • 2-meter Missile Launcher - An internal launcher for the Confederacy's FTL-capable "Skip" torpedo
  • Laser-Guided Missile Launcher - an unspecified system where targets are designated by lasers emitting a specific color that the missile homes in on
  • Archerfish Missile Launcher - fires a missile design developed on Azahar that has terminal guidance and a shaped-charge warhead

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 top ten usage counts for Missile Launcher:


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 top ten usage counts for Missile:

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 The Chinese Obligation by Thinking Horndog
"You'll have to shut down the shield to allow ships to land or to cross the shield boundary in suits," the sergeant instructed, holding up a small remote. "We'll be using these controllers to transit the shield and you should carry one or have one integrated into your suits and equipment. In periods of high meteor activity, you can leave the inner shield on until someone approaches the boundary, while the outer shield remains off. The AIs can handle transitions without difficulty. We're not doing permanent siting per se, but have left nannites to lay foundations for the equipment. Once they're done, the power draw will drop by twenty-five percent or so as the grav stabilizers will shut down." They gave a period of instruction on operation and maintenance of the equipment that lasted all of thirty minutes -- mostly for the missile launchers which deployed missiles similar enough to the ones being manufactured at the plant to make the instructions easily understood -- and moved out, over the horizon. Tom and Tania never saw THEM again, either, and the Uffington Castle displaced in orbit to provide top cover and wasn't heard from again until they briefly announced their intention to break orbit.

From Ending This Mess by Zen Master
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 Destination Azahar by deGaffer
The new missile cruiser Raphael Semmes was among the capital ships of the fleet. Among the crew of Raphael Semmes were Major Bronson and Commander Williams as the weapons and engineering officers respectively. The ship had a two-meter missile launcher and two 50-centimeter missile launchers along each flank. Each of the launchers was fed by automated magazines that were loaded with various propulsion and warhead combinations.

From Independent Command by Zen Master
Larry gave one last order, which was the same thing we were doing: Advance at the highest speed that their Patrician, the Montserrat, could keep up with. If the Patricians didn't have their four missile launchers, we both would have said "tough luck" and left them behind. As it was they had half of our most powerful long-range weapons, and all the newer ships had to keep their acceleration down to let them keep up. After that order, Larry formally turned operational control of Task Force 2 over to Arturo, effectively turning Brennan into just another minor ship under Arturo's command.

From Independent Command by Zen Master
Actually, the missile launchers were almost completely self-contained; all they needed were power, targeting data, and permission to fire. Any that we could get mounted on a hulk would make that hulk's chance of surviving much better. As soon as the get-us-out-of-here stuff was in progress, we had Barton get any construction bots still not busy start working on that. Set it in place, weld it down, make sure it has power and data connectivity, and go install another one. Enclosing them so that crew can access them without suits can wait. Go install another one.

From Ending This Mess by Zen Master
Every human system put a set of “early-warning stations” out there as soon as they could build them, as it gave us at least an hour of warning before an attack. Wealthier systems like Sol itself put missile launchers out there, too. We had done the same thing, but not as extensively as Sol did. After all our incursions we were fairly confident that our ships could repel anyone, so rather than waste our limited manufacturing capacity on millions of missile stations, we just built ships.

From Independent Command by Zen Master
We had long since installed those StarSparrow missile launchers everywhere. The Womb, Hotel, Barton Yard, the Greeks, every fixed installation had several guarding the approaches. Every ship had at least two except our Castles, Patricians, and Shiros. Those had started with only two of the small PDLs or PDRs, Point-Defense Lasers or Point-Defense Railguns and no room for anything else, so we replaced one with a StarSparrow launcher and left the other one in place in case we needed it.

From Chosen Frozen II by lordshipmayhem
"Here it comes," remarked Ensign Wattie, preparing to button up. Three more Rommels had been delivered to their location, First Squad. The impossibly young ensign was happy to have the commander of the lead tank, Lieutenant Satterthwaite, there to back them up. They'd also received another platoon of infantry and a brace of SPT-301 medium missile launchers, bringing the self-propelled artillery up to two full, if mixed, batteries.

From Guerilla by Zipper D Dude
Patrician(M): An experimental minelaying adaptation of the Patrician Class Corvette. (q.v.) The four missile launchers and the port rail-gun are removed. Point defence systems are halved. Two mine-launching tubes are added, one forward, replacing the port rail-gun, and one aft. The vessel is stealth-coated to reduce the risk of detection. It carries thirty mines, together with eight rounds for the rail-gun.

From The Davidson Chronicles by Cat5
He and another Marine transported to one of the Sabet sites. The missile launcher held two missiles-the Sabet P and next to it the Sabet HE. The launcher itself was quite primitive and had to turn using hydraulics and aimed manually. After the missiles were aimed the arming device was set to go off either with a timer or when given an electronic command from our forward command post.

From Ending This Mess by Zen Master
Subsequent waves of bombers had to choose to go through the entire expedition to get to their targets, or circle around the fleet looking for weak points. Either tactic allowed us to send missiles or fighters after them as we chose, although we couldn’t do both. The StarSparrow had an IFF system that could tell our fighters from the Sa’arm bombers, but no one would actually trust it in the chaos of a furball. And, no matter where they attacked from, they had to go through ALL of our escorts and warships to get to the carriers.

From Independent Command by Zen Master
As soon as the range dropped to 3000 Km, the outer limit of their powered flight envelope, every StarSparrow mount in the whole Taffy dumped its on-mount load of seven missiles at the oncoming Limas, then reloaded from its ready magazine. The cruisers all had four mounts, and the destroyers and Shiros each had two. There were only 36 of the Limas, and we sent several hundred missiles at them. The results made me feel almost as good as watching Big Mama blow up had, almost a year before.

From Independent Command by Zen Master
The StarSparrow launchers only had 7 missiles on-mount, with another 6 modules surrounding the mount where they could be quickly swapped out, for a total of 49 missiles per launcher. Since the only threat we wanted them for was the Sa'arm bombers, we thought that this should be enough. Still, all of our larger ships had a secondary magazine that held more modules.

From Ending This Mess by Zen Master
By the fifth or sixth wave, Kevin had ordered Joey to send up his supply ships so that they could reload, well, everything. Sun-wall missile pods, StarSparrow missile modules, tungsten slugs for all the coilguns and railguns, everything. And, the slugs were the only things that they could use transporters to transfer. Everything else was too big.

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.

From Crisis at Ishtar by Allan Joyal
Lieutenant Krupke shrugged, even though Admiral Himmel could not have seen it. "A reaction force coming out of the orbit of Wolf three-six-seven. We caught four heavy slow transports just inside jump distance for the sun there and had just finished blowing both of the engines on one when the first missiles appeared on our radar. Corporal Sloan and Captain Jordan spent the next sixteen hours dodging the missiles while we tried to run down the other three transports. We crippled a second, hit the holds of the third and must have struck something vital because the resulting explosions not only destroyed the transport, but gave us a temporary respite from the missiles as the debris became a rather effective anti-missile shield. We were lining up the final one when a sliver missile burst just off the starboard bow and took out the engine. After that Captain Jordan tried to run, but it was too late."

From Guerilla by Zipper D Dude
The two Archerfish boats accelerated to attack speed, closing in on their first objective, target Alpha, the most complete of the three Voluptas Hive Spheres orbiting the second planet. Currently it was drifting passively in space: no active scan, engines down, not even any shields. The admiral's attacks on the fuel stations had drawn away the bulk of its protecting warships so it was sitting there dumb, immobile and almost undefended. Paradoxically, being powered down made it a more difficult target to hit. Their missiles were designed to home on enemy emissions: engine exhausts, active scanning and the like. This target wasn't doing any of that, so the missiles were going in half-blind. Zsuzsa had discussed the problem with Yao-ting beforehand and they'd agreed to move in to close range and fire their missiles unguided. From that distance, the big Hive Sphere was easy enough to hit without any guidance. With its engines off-line it couldn't dodge, so it was just a matter of steering directly at the target, getting close and firing their missiles straight ahead.

From Pickup Loop Hole by corsair
The compensation package was worked out after dinner with Marty. Money wasn't going to be any good. Instead, there were medical upgrades to give perfect health to mechanics and their immediate families, a food source for when food rationing was instituted, and both weapons and combat training. An irregular training team would teach basic tactics and marksmanship with a man-portable missile launcher that would fire five small homing missiles of 37mm. The missiles would gouge out a hole a foot wide in a Sa'arm warrior-and punch through the sides of those wheeled combat vehicles the Sa'arm used. A cold launch system disguised the launch location-and then the missile's motor ignited, giving it a range of three miles. A human could carry the launcher and twenty missiles. It was designed to be fabricated on Earth.

From Guerilla by Zipper D Dude
The fourth rock fell. Five minutes before its closest approach to the Hive Sphere, clocks awoke monochromatic sensors on its surface. To the sensors all appeared dark. They waited ... Light! The sensors activated explosive bolts on the first set of covers, blowing them off into space. Underneath each cover was a densely packed array of missiles. Two seconds later, the missiles activated and ripple fired, racing away to seek their targets. The laser light was very monochromatic, so the seeker heads on the missiles were very simple - find the right colour target and hit it. A few missiles headed for smaller Sa'arm ships caught in the light-beam from the laser while the rest accelerated straight for the biggest, brightest target in the vicinity: the nearly complete Hive Sphere.

From Going Fishing by lordshipmayhem
Marcie went into pedant mode. "The Archerfish is of a new type of ship designed to carry a supply of anti-ship missiles stealthily - or at least stealthily in terms of the Sa'arm sensors and organic inputs. They're small - a crew of twelve, plus twelve concubines - but pack a powerful punch. The missiles are the latest from Azahar's brain trust, a super-large dual-charge round based on the shaped-charge methodology of Earth tanks' HEAT rounds, launched from a missile tube and capable of homing in on the enemy. The ship's design is simple, elegant and can be mass-produced in prodigious quantities, just what we need against something as fecund as the Sa'arm. It's simply four pods in tandem in front of a pair of engines, within an armoured shield that includes a coating that absorbs all radiation in the spectrum covered by the Sa'arm's optics."


(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))

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