Would ******* ***** Make Good Weapons In Trek?

[All Seeing Eye]

Would Cluster Bombs Make Good Weapons In Trek?

Think about it, imagine a type of torpedo that comprises of several warheads in a cluster. As the Torpedo approaches the enemy ship it breaks apart, these extra parts break apart yet again to reveal even more warheads and suddenly the enemy ship is hit with a blanket of warheads.

Such a weapon would:

1. Be effective to counter counter measures.
2. Would be hard to avoid with evasive manoeuvres.
3. Would inflict more considerable damage to a ships hull.
4. Would effectively create more hull breaches as would otherwise.
5. Would be more likely to hit and damage critical systems.

Why in hundreds of years of Trek were these weapons never utilised by the Federation?

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Such a weapon would widen it's energy spread from a single point on the shield, to a large area, as such, making it nearly useless IIRC. On unshielded ships, it might not be, but then, we've got that tri-cobalt stuff for that. Or we could just beam critical ship's components out.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Well, the Narada's cluster missiles seemed quite effective against the Kelvin - seeing as they almost totally bypassed the shields. So yeah, I'd say cluster weaponry is total pwnage against an unshielded target or a target which is practically defenseless, but would probably be crap against shields.

 

[Vanyel]

Wouldn't the dispersal pattern known as "Sierra" used in Yesterday's Enterprise and in a Voyager episode accomplish the same thing?

 

[Myasishchev]

Yes, although you'd trade individual yield for a greater chance of striking the target.

I suspect the greatest use of cluster munitions would be to blind sensors with sequenced flashes of high-frequency light, similar to the BoBW antimatter spread.

 

[Deks]

Well, the Narada's cluster missiles seemed quite effective against the Kelvin - seeing as they almost totally bypassed the shields. So yeah, I'd say cluster weaponry is total pwnage against an unshielded target or a target which is practically defenseless, but would probably be crap against shields.

That comparison is not exactly fair due to the fact that we are talking of late 24th century torpedoes, vs early 23rd century shields.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Well, the Narada's cluster missiles seemed quite effective against the Kelvin - seeing as they almost totally bypassed the shields. So yeah, I'd say cluster weaponry is total pwnage against an unshielded target or a target which is practically defenseless, but would probably be crap against shields.

That comparison is not exactly fair due to the fact that we are talking of late 24th century torpedoes, vs early 23rd century shields.

I acknowledged that already - emphasis mine.

 

[Timo]

Be effective to counter counter measures.

But apparently the defender doesn't bother with any countermeasures to bother with. Or then there are countermeasures, but they don't cause single torpedoes to miss, either. So nothing is won by countering the countermeasures - indeed, something might be lost if the defender shuts down whatever countermeasures he had, finding them no longer 0.02% effective but only 0.00005% effective, and thus can dedicate those resources to hurting you back.

Would be hard to avoid with evasive manoeuvres.

But single torpedoes are not avoided with evasive maneuvers, either. Their hit rate generally remains at 100%, maneuvering or no maneuvering.

Would inflict more considerable damage to a ships hull.

Would they? If you divide the explosive charge of a HESH round into a dozen smaller charges, then each of them becomes worthless as it lacks the threshold explosive yield to fracture the armor it hits. Or if you divide the kinetic energy or momentum of a sabot round into a dozen smaller darts, none will penetrate.

Would effectively create more hull breaches as would otherwise.

Then again, if the purpose of a projectile is to pierce the hull, one would assume that a single torpedo would already carry the minimum yield needed for that, and not an ounce more. So sub-munitions would again fail to score damage.

Would be more likely to hit and damage critical systems.

Would they? Our heroes typically start scoring more damage when they concentrate their fire on specific types of target, say, weapons or propulsion or shield generators or whatnot. So a submunition might hit a critical system by accident but would provide less than maximum damage there, while an aimed single projectile would be more likely to hit said critical system and would then score maximum damage there.

Cluster munitions today are wonderful against "soft" targets, but typically next to useless against properly armored vehicles or fortified positions. Ditto, flechette rounds and other sort of shrapnel are great against unarmored aircraft, but have proven somewhat impotent against the hulls of armored helicopters or CAS aircraft. IMHO, a shielded starship would be a "hard" target in any case - and actually much harder in relation to the available weapon yield than a tank is today, since a single "round" cannot kill a starship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Would Cluster Bombs Make Good Weapons In Trek?

Yes.

Just ask the crew of the USS Kelvin.

Why in hundreds of years of Trek were these weapons never utilised by the Federation?

Because, as you use the term "cluster bombs" you allude to a type of weapon whose use is widely associated with war crimes. Cluster bomb sub-munitions have a relatively high dud rate, and areas where they are used become hazardous to civilian populations for decades afterwards. The effect they have in short term combat is miniscule compared to the calamity they cause on civilians in the aftermath.

Which is probably why only psychotic Romulan warlords like Nero actually use them. They don't do alot of damage (against 24th century targets, anyway) but they can bring a surprising amount of misery to civilian populations once un-exploded sub-munitions start falling out of orbit and landing on their cities.

 

[Timo]

But Nero only used his multiple missiles against starship targets, not planetary ones.

The "cluster missile" idea smacks of the dreaded Multi-Vector Assault Mode of VOY "Message in a Bottle" infamy: it's almost always a good idea to hit the enemy with lots of weapons from multiple directions, but it's almost never a good idea to pack all those weapons in a single carrier platform for launch. Nero didn't seem to launch cluster missiles. He just launched a lot of missiles.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

The only thing coming somewhat close to a cluster bomb idea are the Ent D's torpedo spreads, but of course thats just a spitting out of 5-10 full sized photon torps instead of spitting out submunitions...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But Nero only used his multiple missiles against starship targets, not planetary ones.

Doesn't matter. In orbital space you have no control of where those projectiles eventually end up. Like conventional cluster bombs, they'd become a navigational hazard for decades.

Nero didn't seem to launch cluster missiles. He just launched a lot of missiles.

Several of his missiles DID release sub-munitions shortly before impact, cluster-bomb style. We best see this in the Kelvin scene where we get a chase-view of one of those missiles as its fin/spike things break off and swarm around the ship as it makes a desperate attempt to shoot them down with its phasers.

 

[caisson2delta]

This concept might be practical if used for a general saturation of an area as opposed to being used against a single target. It might be useful if trying to engage a swarm of smaller ships, moving at extremely high speeds, that might be difficult to target under normal combat situations. I could see a mass of cluster type torpedoes being of some use in this type of situation.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

It hasn't been used because it's useless. We have to assume that the torpedoes are already the bare minimum necessary to effectively fight capital ships.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, clusters of small munitions today are used because the weapons cannot deliver clusters of large munitions. You can shoot either a 155mm shell, or a 155mm container carrying tiny bomblets, out of your field piece. You can't deliver ten 155mm shells in one shot.

That shouldn't prevent Star Trek species from building torpedo launchers that fire clusters of torpedoes. Not torpedo-shaped canisters with lots of mini-torpedoes inside, but huge bundles of full-sized torpedoes - ten munitions instead of one, without any reduction in yield. If cluster firing were that important, then multi-firing torpedo tubes (or multiple torpedo tubes) would be all the vogue in shipbuilding.

Reputedly, the Galaxy class had this feature built in - we see at least one cluster launch. But most ships still make do with just two forward-firing tubes that don't fire clusters. So we can assume that the volume of fire, in terms of number of munitions in flight at any given time, is not really all that important in ST space combat.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

OTOH, clusters of small munitions today are used because the weapons cannot deliver clusters of large munitions. You can shoot either a 155mm shell, or a 155mm container carrying tiny bomblets, out of your field piece. You can't deliver ten 155mm shells in one shot.

The obvious solution is to build a 450mm cannon with ten 155mm shells in a sabot. In this case, your cannon would look like an ICBM launcher, though, and this just isn't an efficient use of field artillery since a less expensive unit could deliver all ten of those shells with better accuracy and lower cost.

On the other hand, an actual ICBM with ten nuclear warheads is a VERY effective way of delivering mass destruction. The same may be true of torpedoes too, but only if the explosive yield of a single weapon outweighs the cost of added complexity in a multi-launch system. It clearly did by the time of TNG, and maybe it will by the time of NuTrek as well.

 

[Scout101]

^Same problem, though. Why shoot 10 155mm shells if you can shoot one 450mm shell that will cause more damage?

These things are all shot at just about undodgable speeds, and seem to have pretty good guidance, thus rarely miss (unless the targeting system is down, etc). Why score a bunch of lesser hits when you can get one monster hit instead?

i.e. you can get 10 smaller hits on a target, hurting all systems a bit, or take the one larger torpedo and spear the damned thing all the way through the ship, tearing a giant chunk off instead.

Scatter bombs work best if you can't aim reliably, or if there are a lot of small targets. If you can hit pinpoint anyway, and it's usually one big target, you should want maximum yield on each hit, for max damage, instead of a bunch of smaller stings.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^Same problem, though. Why shoot 10 155mm shells if you can shoot one 450mm shell that will cause more damage?

Exactly my point. A 150mm shell with a 5 megaton warhead is usually more firepower than you realistically need for any particular target. But if somehow you suddenly find the need to demolish, say, the Super Dimension Fortress Macross, it is more efficient to nail it with ten nuclear warheads instead of one big one, especially since a 50 megaton warhead would be a bit heavy and expensive even compared to a stack of ten smaller ones.

i.e. you can get 10 smaller hits on a target, hurting all systems a bit, or take the one larger torpedo and spear the damned thing all the way through the ship, tearing a giant chunk off instead.

Yeah, but a single torpedo only does so much damage no matter how powerful it is. There's a matter of surface area and the fact that the blast energy isn't ALL absorbed by the target. And again, in some cases you can get more bang for a smaller buck if you combine multiple small warheads in a single package. Imagine trying to chop down a tree, for example: you can try to whack it with a five-ton axe moving at 70mph, or you can take a thousand tiny whacks at it with a chainsaw. In almost every case, the chain saw is a more efficient tool for that job.

 

[Scout101]

of course, if that tree has a large, explosive reactor inside of it, and the mega-bomb can get all the way to it, it'll still be easier, faster, and safer for the other ship, vs a bunch of smaller whacks that systematically take down the other ship...

With shields, the target may be able to take a bunch of smaller hits while the shields slowly wear down, but a massive strike should overload the shields much faster, with more energy than the shields can absorb/dissapate in a single hit.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

of course, if that tree has a large, explosive reactor inside of it, and the mega-bomb can get all the way to it, it'll still be easier, faster, and safer for the other ship, vs a bunch of smaller whacks that systematically take down the other ship...

With shields, the target may be able to take a bunch of smaller hits while the shields slowly wear down, but a massive strike should overload the shields much faster, with more energy than the shields can absorb/dissapate in a single hit.

Same problem with the tree. One massive hit could easily overwhelm it, but several smaller hits concentrated on the same spot would do the same job somewhat more efficiently. If it takes 200 megatons to overwhelm the shields, it doesn't matter whether you hit it with a single warhead or 20 ten-megaton warheads, the shields collapse either way. The only question is whether it's easier to launch a giant missile or twenty little missiles; the latter is often the case.