Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

fidel wrote:
Actually now that I did a bit of research - I do not think a SAM sight has a chance to take out a drop pod. What you guys are thinking is that the SAM missile takes out the drop pod with a direct hit (the 40ft long exploding telephone pole). However, upon some research it seems that the missile works very much in the same way as fragmentary wound. It explodes in the vicinity of the missile in order to detonate it safely in the atmosphere. Essentially what a sam missile would do is detect the drop pod as a foreign (enemy) projectile, it would calculate the trajectory, and it would launch along the "same line." It would then explode in near proximity to the drop pod in order to try to detonate it - herein lies the problem.

You would be relying on the drop pod being penetrated by the shrapnel of the missile... which would be quite substantial... but still it would have a hard time. What makes it even more unlikely is that if the SAM missile does not directly hit (as it is not suppose to) the drop pod would be traveling too fast for the shrapnel to do significant damage. The drop pod essentially breaks the sound barrier, much like a missile does, but the missile just needs one shrapnel piece to penetrate the explosive inside, where as the drop pod... meh.

Now the awesome thing is that some missiles can track missiles, in case the incoming missiles changes trajectory. This could come in handy if the drop pod machine spirit changes its retro thrusters to burn itself into a different trajectory, but again, the problem arises is that the missile is exploding to basically explode another missile, not to kill it outright.

Now that I think about it... its kinda like that game missile defense haha. Only difference is that those aren't missiles.. but the angels of death..... 0_0

Of course, if your anti-aircraft weapons are rail guns, then you ARE going for a kinetic kill, and such points are moot. A rail gun slug would punch a hole clean through a drop pod with little difficulty.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

fidel wrote:
Actually now that I did a bit of research - I do not think a SAM sight has a chance to take out a drop pod. What you guys are thinking is that the SAM missile takes out the drop pod with a direct hit (the 40ft long exploding telephone pole). However, upon some research it seems that the missile works very much in the same way as fragmentary wound. It explodes in the vicinity of the missile in order to detonate it safely in the atmosphere. Essentially what a sam missile would do is detect the drop pod as a foreign (enemy) projectile, it would calculate the trajectory, and it would launch along the "same line." It would then explode in near proximity to the drop pod in order to try to detonate it - herein lies the problem.

You would be relying on the drop pod being penetrated by the shrapnel of the missile... which would be quite substantial... but still it would have a hard time. What makes it even more unlikely is that if the SAM missile does not directly hit (as it is not suppose to) the drop pod would be traveling too fast for the shrapnel to do significant damage. The drop pod essentially breaks the sound barrier, much like a missile does, but the missile just needs one shrapnel piece to penetrate the explosive inside, where as the drop pod... meh.

Now the awesome thing is that some missiles can track missiles, in case the incoming missiles changes trajectory. This could come in handy if the drop pod machine spirit changes its retro thrusters to burn itself into a different trajectory, but again, the problem arises is that the missile is exploding to basically explode another missile, not to kill it outright.

Now that I think about it... its kinda like that game missile defense haha. Only difference is that those aren't missiles.. but the angels of death..... 0_0

Of course, if your anti-aircraft weapons are rail guns, then you ARE going for a kinetic kill, and such points are moot. A rail gun slug would punch a hole clean through a drop pod with little difficulty.

Uh, no. Rail guns aren't used for kinetic strikes in air defense, they're still airburst as simply being a degree off with your system leads to you missing the target.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:

fidel wrote:
Actually now that I did a bit of research - I do not think a SAM sight has a chance to take out a drop pod. What you guys are thinking is that the SAM missile takes out the drop pod with a direct hit (the 40ft long exploding telephone pole). However, upon some research it seems that the missile works very much in the same way as fragmentary wound. It explodes in the vicinity of the missile in order to detonate it safely in the atmosphere. Essentially what a sam missile would do is detect the drop pod as a foreign (enemy) projectile, it would calculate the trajectory, and it would launch along the "same line." It would then explode in near proximity to the drop pod in order to try to detonate it - herein lies the problem.

You would be relying on the drop pod being penetrated by the shrapnel of the missile... which would be quite substantial... but still it would have a hard time. What makes it even more unlikely is that if the SAM missile does not directly hit (as it is not suppose to) the drop pod would be traveling too fast for the shrapnel to do significant damage. The drop pod essentially breaks the sound barrier, much like a missile does, but the missile just needs one shrapnel piece to penetrate the explosive inside, where as the drop pod... meh.

Now the awesome thing is that some missiles can track missiles, in case the incoming missiles changes trajectory. This could come in handy if the drop pod machine spirit changes its retro thrusters to burn itself into a different trajectory, but again, the problem arises is that the missile is exploding to basically explode another missile, not to kill it outright.

Now that I think about it... its kinda like that game missile defense haha. Only difference is that those aren't missiles.. but the angels of death..... 0_0

Of course, if your anti-aircraft weapons are rail guns, then you ARE going for a kinetic kill, and such points are moot. A rail gun slug would punch a hole clean through a drop pod with little difficulty.

Uh, no. Rail guns aren't used for kinetic strikes in air defense, they're still airburst as simply being a degree off with your system leads to you missing the target.

Damn stole my answer. To be more specific - railguns actually attempt to detonate by either striking the target (highly unlikely) to striking near the target in such a speed that it sheers away the missile (essentially exploding it with sheer velocity). Kind of cool technology when you think about it.

There's also planned interceptor platforms that effectively are a hypersonic fragmentation launcher/shotgun that detonates near the target in a cluster of shrapnel at absurd velocities. Or even be used to strike infantry and vehicles and deal absurd amounts of damage.

fidel wrote:
What you guys are thinking is that the SAM missile takes out the drop pod with a direct hit (the 40ft long exploding telephone pole). However, upon some research it seems that the missile works very much in the same way as fragmentary wound. It explodes in the vicinity of the missile in order to detonate it safely in the atmosphere.

This is not true. Back in the 1950s we were able to get direct hits on incoming ballistic missiles. Not "my nuke explodes within a mile of it and kills it", not "shrapnel impact damages it enough to make it stop working", a direct hit where the SAM smashes into the ICBM and both are destroyed by the collision. Speed alone is no defense against interceptor missiles.

You would be relying on the drop pod being penetrated by the shrapnel of the missile... which would be quite substantial... but still it would have a hard time.

No, I'm relying on a direct hit from a megaton-range nuclear warhead (or its Tau/Eldar/etc equivalent). As in "the nuclear warhead touches the drop pod and then explodes". AKA, goodbye space marines.

fidel wrote:
Aforementioned novel (storm of iron) notwithstanding - there are other great examples of this. Essentially you kinetic/bombard very specific local targets (for example since I live in NJ, the SAM silos in NJ and NY). Then you drop unmanned pods full of turrets to clear out local population and expend the AA. When the smoke clears is when you drop the Space Marine.

The problem is that by the time you're delivering enough firepower to be sure you killed the AA defenses you've already killed anything within a hundred miles of your target. The space marines drop into the radioactive wasteland that used to be a target, walk around for a while without seeing anything to kill, and then return to their ships. And if you make the assumption that something down there needs to be taken intact you don't get to have the orbital bombardment and the space marines are dropping into an operational AA network.

By the way - you also forget how small the drop pod is, and how quick its entry into the atmosphere is. Sure a SAM missile could get it, but its unlikely.

Again, the problem of hitting an incoming ICBM (faster and smaller than a drop pod) was solved back in the 1950s. It's just not a difficult kind of target to hit. The only reason nobody can do it in 40k is that 99.999% of the universe is stuck at a 1940s level of technology at best.

Drop Pods are certainly significantly larger than a MIRV platform carrying warheads re-entering the atmosphere.

Likewise, as to SAM's being unable to hurt drop pods, Flakk missiles would seem to work much the same way traditional SAM's do, and they certainly can harm drop pods.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, as to SAM's being unable to hurt drop pods, Flakk missiles would seem to work much the same way traditional SAM's do, and they certainly can harm drop pods.

And not just any SAMs, they seem to be the equivalent of modern infantry-level weapons like the Stinger missile and its ~5lb fragmentation warhead. The fact that such a weapon can damage a drop pod at all is a pretty clear sign that drop pod durability isn't all that impressive. Against a "real" air defense network the threat to drop pods wouldn't be random infantry squads taking a shot with their personal weapons, it would be the 40k equivalent of Nike Zeus or Sprint missiles: large silo-launched weapons with nuclear warheads (or huge plasma bombs, etc) controlled by a network dedicated to stopping attacks from orbit.

Again, the problem of hitting an incoming ICBM (faster and smaller than a drop pod) was solved back in the 1950s. It's just not a difficult kind of target to hit. The only reason nobody can do it in 40k is that 99.999% of the universe is stuck at a 1940s level of technology at best.

Dubious. An ICBM is fething huge, especially the ones from the 50s. The 1950s ICBMs are twice, or more, as long as a drop-pod, being twenty to thirty meters long, on average (and they are not much smaller today). That's a significant radar signature, and we're not considering the ECCM suite that the orbiting ship, or even the pod itself, may be equipped with.

 Psienesis wrote:

Again, the problem of hitting an incoming ICBM (faster and smaller than a drop pod) was solved back in the 1950s. It's just not a difficult kind of target to hit. The only reason nobody can do it in 40k is that 99.999% of the universe is stuck at a 1940s level of technology at best.

Dubious. An ICBM is fething huge, especially the ones from the 50s. The 1950s ICBMs are twice, or more, as long as a drop-pod, being twenty to thirty meters long, on average (and they are not much smaller today). That's a significant radar signature, and we're not considering the ECCM suite that the orbiting ship, or even the pod itself, may be equipped with.

I am not sure.

The only source we have on drop pod size (Outside of the tabletop game, but who is seriously going to take the models as a source for sizes?) is the following:

The Last Detail wrote:“In an explosion of concrete and soil, a behemoth thundered to earth. It was dozens of metres tall, painted midnight blue, and on its multi-faceted sides was painted the sigil of the double-headed axe. It scattered the cultists through the air with the force of its impact, and in its wake came another, and another, and then two more. It was as if a series of great metal castles had suddenly been hurled to earth. With a scream of straining metal, long hatches fell down from the sides of these monstrous apparitions, as though they were the petals opening on a flower.”

May have been a Kharybdis though.

I think that's just another instance of something being written without a realistic sense of scale or exaggerated for propaganda effect.

Even using the minimum height to qualify for plural "dozens", two dozen, we're talking something roughly 80 feet tall, or about the height of an 8 story office building or nearly the full length of a Boeing 737 fuselage.

Even a Kharbydis would be extremely questionable at that height, that's solidly into Superheavy territory. A Warhound titan is noted as being 15 meters tall, a Reaver is 22 meters tall, and I can't imagine drop pods being as tall, much less taller, than they are.

 Psienesis wrote:
Dubious. An ICBM is fething huge, especially the ones from the 50s. The 1950s ICBMs are twice, or more, as long as a drop-pod, being twenty to thirty meters long, on average (and they are not much smaller today).

This is true, but misleading. The ICBM at launch is huge, but the lower stages are dropped before the point where an interceptor missile is engaging it. The target at that point is just the warhead in its reentry shield, and that's a much smaller target (in most, if not all, cases smaller than a drop pod).

That's a significant radar signature

Possibly, but not necessarily. Radar signature depends on both the size of the target and its geometry, and a drop pod certainly doesn't seem to include any attempts to minimize radar reflection. Plus, a drop pod has a massive heat signature even if it's magically invisible to radar.

and we're not considering the ECCM suite that the orbiting ship, or even the pod itself, may be equipped with.

ECM that does not have any fluff support behind it. The fluff is that drop pods are difficult to hit because of speed alone, any hypothetical ECM contribution is so small that GW doesn't bother to mention it. And if you want to propose ECM support from an orbiting ship then you have to explain its absence in every other context. If marines can shut down ground-based weapons with orbital ECM then why don't we see battle after battle where marines on the ground are impossible to hit and the enemy complaints about how all of their targeting systems are jammed?

Peregrine, can you provide some data to back up your assertions that people were sniping out ICBMs in the 50s please?

Anyway, thinking about the design of a Drop Pod, you don't even need to blow it up midair to wreck the thing. All you have to do is impart enough lateral kinetic force at the top or bottom, and suddenly the drop pod (whose inertial guidance systems basically amount to 'left a bit, left a bit, right a bit, there') is incapable of decelerating or guiding itself on account of being on its side or inverted.

Yeah, if a drop pod gets knocked at all it's going to have a hard time correcting. If it gets knocked into a spin, its probably screwed.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Peregrine, can you provide some data to back up your assertions that people were sniping out ICBMs in the 50s please?

I can't find the source I'm thinking of, where some of the "near miss and kill it with a nuke" tests ended up scoring direct hits on the target (complete with pictures of the impact) but Nike Zeus was successfully intercepting ICBMs in 1962-1963 (so still 1950s-era technology). Then page 22 of this article claims at least one direct hit from the Sprint missile in the early 1970s. And the "near miss" results weren't the "overload the missile with radiation from miles away" kind, they were in the ~100m or less range where nothing survives the explosion. That's plenty of accuracy to deal with an incoming drop pod.

And of course there's the modern-era interceptors that are literal kinetic impact weapons with no warhead at all. It's not quite 1950s technology, but it's still well below what should exist tens of thousands of years in the future. Whether 40k technology has regressed all the way to the 1950s or merely to the 1990s doesn't really change the original point I was making: that drop pods only survive by speed alone because most armies in 40k are limited to weapons that modern armies would find laughably bad.

But again - we are forgetting what supercedes the launching of the drop pods. I would love to see an ICBM survive the pre bombardment + the dropping of drop turrets.

I can't find the source I'm thinking of, where some of the "near miss and kill it with a nuke" tests ended up scoring direct hits on the target (complete with pictures of the impact) but Nike Zeus was successfully intercepting ICBMs in 1962-1963 (so still 1950s-era technology). Then page 22 of this article claims at least one direct hit from the Sprint missile in the early 1970s. And the "near miss" results weren't the "overload the missile with radiation from miles away" kind, they were in the ~100m or less range where nothing survives the explosion. That's plenty of accuracy to deal with an incoming drop pod.

So you're suggesting they should fire nukes after droppods? Of which there are alot? Also Droppods, in contrary to ballistic missiles, are armored... They don't break apart that easily. Lastly... why do you think they will drop right on top of the defense installation? They can drop into the hinterlands, infiltrate on foot and take the sites in question out.
On Taros they dropped on the other side of the planet where there where only few defense installation.

If it's that easy to intercept maneuverable projectiles, why where (and still are) the US / Russia afraid of retaliatory action in case of a nuke strike? There's a reason why MARV warheads are feared...
Also, just because there is a chance to destroy a droppod doesn't mean nothing gets through. Losses have to be expected.
Lastly, if a position is very well defended against orbital threats, there are other options. And just because direct drops are not viable in this case, doesn't make them useless in their entirety.

All you have to do is impart enough lateral kinetic force at the top or bottom, and suddenly the drop pod (whose inertial guidance systems basically amount to 'left a bit, left a bit, right a bit, there') is incapable of decelerating or guiding itself on account of being on its side or inverted.

Droppods are also used for space combat boarding. Therefore they have maneuvering thrusters and more then just "left a bit right a bit". With maneuvering thrusters it can stabilize itself out of a spin (besides, gravity and airresistance would aid in that as well).

fidel wrote:
But again - we are forgetting what supercedes the launching of the drop pods. I would love to see an ICBM survive the pre bombardment + the dropping of drop turrets.

If you're bombing the target heavily enough to destroy armored missile silos (which, in real life, required direct hits from nukes to ensure a kill) then you're bombing it heavily enough to destroy anything within a hundred miles of those silos. This is supported by IA3 where the space marine ship in orbit launches a bombardment of a missile silo to soften up the outside defenses for an assault by Thunderhawk, and the marine commander's view is explicitly "it would be nice if we get lucky and somehow kill the missile with the orbital bombardment, but we probably won't and we need to send the marines in to do it". So any bombardment that would reliably kill the missile silos is going to be the "turn a whole continent into a pool of lava" kind where nothing survives. And if everything is already dead why bother sending the marines? Just fire a few more shots from orbit.

Marines (or groud forces of any kind) only make sense if you assume that something on the ground needs to be taken intact, and that means you don't get to nuke the whole region from orbit. And that means the interceptor missiles will be intact and waiting for you.

 Keep wrote:
So you're suggesting they should fire nukes after droppods? Of which there are alot?

And there are a lot of nukes (or nuke-equivalent weapons) in the modern world. The US alone has about 500 ICBMs and had considerably more before they agreed to treaty limits on nuclear weapons. If we, as a very rough estimate, assume that most of those ICBMs would be replaced with interceptor missiles (since a unified planetary government has little need to shoot at its own territory) in a 40k defense network then that's enough interceptor missiles to shoot multiple missiles per pod at a full-chapter drop pod assault. \

Conclusion: any 40k planet that doesn't have enough interceptor nukes to deal with the average drop pod assault is weakly armed even by 2015 standards.

Also Droppods, in contrary to ballistic missiles, are armored... They don't break apart that easily.

They're armored, but not enough to stop a direct hit from a megaton-range nuke. They might be somewhat more resistant to the more extreme forms of proximity attacks (use one nuke to take out a whole salvo of ICBMs by using the radiation to damage the warheads), but that's not what they'd be facing.

Lastly... why do you think they will drop right on top of the defense installation? They can drop into the hinterlands, infiltrate on foot and take the sites in question out.
On Taros they dropped on the other side of the planet where there where only few defense installation.

So, without even firing a shot, the defender has almost entirely negated the value of drop pods (the ability to drop directly into combat) and diverted the marines out into the middle of nowhere. Remember, even real-world interceptor missiles can cover area hundreds of miles in radius, so have fun walking 500 miles before you can get into battle. At that point you might as well just use Thunderhawks and land a conventional marine army, complete with transport vehicles.

If it's that easy to intercept maneuverable projectiles, why where (and still are) the US / Russia afraid of retaliatory action in case of a nuke strike?

Because there are way more offensive missiles than defensive interceptors. The US and Russia have the ability (or will have it soon) to stop a limited strike, but because of treaty limits on the number of interceptor missiles that can be deployed there are nowhere near enough of them to stop a full-scale attack. If your ~100 interceptors each shoot down an incoming missile there are still hundreds of missiles left to hit your cities and you don't want to start a nuclear war. Iran/North Korea/etc are the real target of the US plan because they don't have enough missiles to overwhelm those defenses.

There's a reason why MARV warheads are feared...

They aren't feared outside of paranoid "BAN THE NUKES" rants.

Also, just because there is a chance to destroy a droppod doesn't mean nothing gets through. Losses have to be expected.

Not when you're dealing with space marines. Remember, the entire Imperium only has about a million space marines. That's smaller than the peacetime all-volunteer US army of 2015. They simply can't afford to throw entire chapters into a battle of attrition with air defense networks and lose 90% of those marines to get a few pods through.

Lastly, if a position is very well defended against orbital threats, there are other options.

Sure, but this was about space marine drop pods, not a claim that attacking a planet in 40k is impossible.

Well, if we pull a page from Heinlien's Starship Troopers (book, not movies), the drop pods are surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds of decoys and various debris. Finding the actual pod in that mess would be difficult at best, so even if you could find it (lets say 10% to be generous) and could launch a missile/fire counter measures in time (60%), and those counter measures worked (50% again to be generous*), but only half of the drop pods are actualy manned (otherwise decoys or turret based). You are looking at a 2% kill rate, not enough to slow any invasion by too much, compound that with the bombardment and thunderhawks raveging the countermeasures and you are looking at even less. Surprise would also work in the attacker's favor.

*even if a missile struck the drop pod, it might not hurt it, bullets/lasers might penatrare but not do anything consittering that most of the pod is empty space.

In the case of Dark Angels, I believe they actually manufacture a lot of their own tech in the Rock. Even if they don't make MOST of it, there's canon evidence in the codex that they make statis bombs in-house and that they keep such things a secret from the Mechanicum.

Planetary defenses are a bit afield from the original question.

Keep in mind that the Primogenitor chapters were all unique in tactics and equipment according to the Primarch's temperament. It's only with the Codex Astartes that you get significant standardization beyond the basic power armor and bolt weapon. Kinda makes sense really; it's a lot easier to have 18 uniquely equipped legions numbering in the tens of thousands each than it is to provide unique gear to thousands of small, 1,000 brother chapters. It's a simple matter of production and logistics.

Those chapters sporting unique gear tend to use arcane relics handed down from the Heresy days, or else craft their own variants of standard gear. Relic-bearers tend to be primogenitors or very early foundings who inherited the gear from the founding legion, and tend to be closely linked to that founding legion culturally and ritually as well.

So unique gear is often linked to the Chapter origin. I'm sure there are Chapters that use looted stuff as well, but the Tech-Priests and Administratum often have strong opinions about collectors of Xeno- and Archeo-tech.

My two cents.