The Dark wrote:
Could I have a quote for that, please, since I don't want to go digging through hundreds of pages of text?
On Basilisk STation wrote:
The Manticoran Navy's electronic missile penetration-aids were at least as much better than estimated as their defensive ECM was. He knew that, and it made him feel absolutely no better about his damage and casualties. He jerked around toward Jamal with fiery eyes and opened his mouth—then froze as one of the tactical officer's warheads detonated less than a thousand kilometers from Fearless's prow.
...
The universe went mad. Stilettos of X-ray radiation stabbed deep into Fearless's lightly-armored hull, breaching compartments, killing her people, clawing and rending at her bulkheads and frame members. And then, a sliver of a second later, the light cruiser smashed into the blast front of the warhead itself.
It was below her as she drove forward, not the direct frontal collision from which nothing could have saved her, but a savage eruption of plasma spumed up beneath her belly through the vacuum of space. Generators howled in protest as the massive shock front of radiation and particles smashed at her shielding like a flail, but they held—barely—and Fearless heaved like a goaded horse as she shot the rapids of destruction.
Note that given the design of a nuke-pumped X-ray laser head (both by rela life bomb pumped laser designs as well as the schematics in Ashes of Victory, IIRC) it is abundantly clear that there are "gaps" through which radiation would leak through and be wasted (from the front at the absolute minimum, if not the back as well. Only the radiation striking the lasing rods would probably be "useable".)
And of course there are the non x-ray portions of the detonation (as relatively minor as they might be.)
Current (real life) x-ray lasers only lase out one end, based on drawings from Livermore, so I don't see why Honorverse ones would suddenly lase in both directions.
Source? Googling doesn't reveal a great deal of data on x-ray laser mirrors (and the applications that do seem to suggest highly specialized usages that may not be consistent with a bomb-pumped x-ray weapon.)
Besides, even if it DOES work, it doesn't alter the upper limit on efficiency the other factors already establish (the percentage of the detonation usable, the amount absorbed by the lasing rods, etc.) Odds are, at best you're probably looking at 60-70% of the warhead's total energy being diverted into the lasing rods, tops. (The rest being lost in the blast wave and in destroying the laser head and missile itself.)
They shotgun if firing into a fleet. Since each laser head is independently targetable, if there's only one target they'll all aim at it.
Are you referring to this?
Short, Victorious War. wrote:
The terminal bus of a laser head mounts sophisticated targeting systems and powerful attitude thrusters to enable it to align itself so as to direct the greatest number of bomb-pumped laser beams at the target, but it is also designed to have a "porcupine" effect, radiating lasers in all directions. Each laser inflicts less damage than a direct hit could have, but the chances of a hit—even multiple hits—from a single missile are greatly increased.
The laser heads "spread" out the shots to increase the chances of hitting a target (which makse sense since they have trouble getting a precise fix on the target's location "in" the Wedge.) But this also results in the fact that they tend to achieve fewer overall hits compared to the number of "lasers" generated (which is actually consistent with the novels.) The only way they can maximize the number of hits is to get closer so that the beams have a shorter distance to travel before spreading significantly. Any ability they have to control the aim of individual lasers is going to be limited by the fixed nature of the rods (they can probably shift the angle some, but not alot.)
And as a note, if they could somehow "redirect" the individual lasers to concentrate most or all of the energy on a single target, building such a capability into the missile (its possible they COULD do it, I believe RL ones could) would take up volume that could otherwise be dedicated to the warhead, thus meaning that a laser head is giong to carry a much smaller "warhead" relative to a standard nuke (which is goign to be tru anyways because of the lasing rods at least, if not the other components like targeting gear and whatnot.) So this is another factor that suggests a direct 'nuke to laser head' comparison is at best generous.