Re: Way OT :o) Stealth and Countermeasures...

In a message dated 12/7/99 06:13:41 PM Mountain Standard Time, 
ias@sprintmail.com writes:

<< There is no reason why can't have a massive number of mini-attenas
the 
size of
 cellular phone.  All the electronics to make it work would be below the

armor,
 so you would end having to blast the ship from on end to the other. 
Easy to
 do if the ship is in port, but quite difficult if she is free to
maneuver. >>

Just a point on this comment. One of the missions of the newer
sea-skimmer 
and hypervelocity missiles is to accellerate a payload of pellets aimed
to 
impact an enemy vessel at high velocity.
These will actually "kill" the vessel. It's called a "Soft-Kill".
How? Your pellets wipe out all the external attena of you ship. No
attena, no 
communications, no sensors, no fire control. And this stuff is NOT an
easy 
fix. Your looking at hours to re-wire, replace, and ops check your
antena 
arrays. This is one of the reasons for putting more and more data link
and 
aqusition antena on the escorts rather than the attacking ship. (The
other 
being when ever you light up, your a target not an attacker :o)
Now this is also quite useful against most ships not just the big ones.
But that again goes back to the "all your eggs in one basket" argument.
For 
the cost of one BB or CV you can get about 4 or more smaller ships with
the 
same capability. (As long as those four are in the same task force :o)

Randy