Countermeasures

B

BlueClaw

Spaceman
In WC1, the fighters you flew, and every other fighter you went up against, didn't have countermeasures. But did countermeasures actually exist in the 2650's, or were missiles deemed as too slow or ineffective to warrant the production of decoys, ECM packages, and chaff pods back in those days?
 
I would think that the lack of decoys/chaff pods aboard early fighters reflects, not a lack of sophistication in decoy construction, but rather a lack of sophistication in fighter construction. What I mean is that it was just not cost effective to mount large numbers of decoys aboard fighters. Perhaps it was a matter of not having room for the decoys and the associated hardware needed to deploy them. In that case, weapons would take priority over countermeasures.

Lack of missile sophistication might figure into the decision as well. In WC1, the most common missile was the heatseeker, and any fighter light enough to be destroyed by a heatseeker (the Hornet) was generally agile enough that a good pilot could dodge it and break the missile lock.

The spread of IR and FF missile use by WC2 times led to the mounting of two or three chaff pods on fighter craft. Two or three were considered sufficiant since at that time Kilrathi fighter squadrons tended to launch large salvos of missiles all at once in the hopes of getting some quick kills (I often had two to four HS missiles chasing me in some missions). Launching these large salvos quickly depleted the Kilrathi's ordinance, and since chaff was 100% effective against missiles of the day, Confed found it unnecessary to spend money on mounting more than a few chaff pods on a fighter.

However, as the end of the war neared, target-recognition technology improved. The result of this was that most missiles were fooled by decoys only about half the time, which meant that two or three decoys may be needed to break a missile lock. This is what led to the practice of mounting 16, 24, or even 32 decoys on each fighter.
 
An interesting hypothesis, Ijuin. It gives sense to the development of countermeasure systems over the years of the Terran-Kilrathi war.
 
ECM packages were around only in Privateer, as I recall it. There were no countermeasures at all in the PC version of WC1.
 
Originally posted by Ghost
I can remember some chaff pods in WC1 or was in WC2?
Click to expand...

That would be WC2. They were introduced in WC2, and looked like a large inflatable disc when used, imho.
 
chaff and flares are not likely to work in space.
Chaff relies upon the ait and wind to spread the foil, the larger the foil field, to a point, the better job it does. no air = no wind = ball of aluminum foil.
Flares would have another problem with, no air, no fire, no fire, no heat source, no heat, no decoy.
ECM in wcp would be just that, ELECTRONIC. they would most likely create a large Electo-magnetic field, this would throw off tracking systems, other than IMRECs, and would also create a large heat signiture. how ECM's can decoy an IMREC, i do not know, or have an idea, as of yet.
 
Well... there are "chaff pods" in WC -- presumably they've come up with some way to spread chaff without requiring wind... like a little explosive... or magic...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top