The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 309: Straight-Helical Long-Range Missile

Miniaturized turret-mounted directed energy weapons make the fleet's close-in firepower network increasingly impenetrable. If explosive weapons such as missiles want to achieve results, they can only make a breakthrough by making the enemy's close-in defense system exhausted by saturation attacks as much as possible.

Coupled with the leap-forward increase in ammunition capacity brought about by the huge ship body, it means that in every battle, the number of missiles and various disposable special structure warheads launched is astonishing. It is not an exaggeration to say that the missile warhead equivalent carried by a super-scientific fleet exceeds the total of the global nuclear arsenal during the Cold War period on Earth in later generations.

Even with the amazing resource utilization rate of the Hive, it is impossible to equip every missile with a fusion propulsion system to carry out long-range, high-speed saturation strikes. However, if traditional chemical propulsion systems are still used, the range and speed of the missiles will be severely limited.

In addition, in existing chemically propelled missiles, represented by the Bagshot series, the warhead only accounts for a small part of the entire missile body, and the vast majority is the propellant stored in the missile body, which also limits the power of the warhead.

Therefore, in the technical discussion, the most radical-minded group of Anomalocaris proposed a concept, namely an integrated structure, where there is no longer a distinction between the warhead and the propulsion part. During the propulsion phase, the fusion reactor inside the missile body carries out controlled fusion propulsion under constraints, and when detonated, it directly turns into uncontrolled fusion.

Although Lin Yi did not adopt this plan due to the cost of fusion reactors, it provided him with inspiration - although fusion reactors are still unaffordable as consumables, if a compromise is made and fission reactors are used, it is not unacceptable.

When there is no need to travel across star systems, fission thrusters are sufficient, but they will need to carry additional working fluid. The key to the integrated structure lies in the working fluid and other structural parts.

Previously, the bio-fission thrusters used by the Hive used liquid hydrogen as a propulsion medium. Liquid hydrogen did not participate in the fission reaction, but was only heated and expanded by the high temperature of the reactor and then ejected backwards at high speed.

After entering the fusion era, the deuterium-tritium fuel used in fusion reactors can either generate high-temperature plasma helium and neutrons as working fluids after the fusion reaction and eject them backwards, or they can be directly heated and ejected.

These fusion fuels can also be used as propulsion media for fission thrusters, and due to their special storage method, they can also undergo uncontrolled fusion reactions instantly and be used as fusion warheads.

As for the method of detonating these fusion fuels, it is also very simple - the easiest way to detonate a hydrogen bomb is to ignite an atomic bomb first, and the fission reactor structure used for propulsion is also specially designed so that it can be used as a fission warhead at one time.

In this way, the propulsion fluid, which accounts for the largest proportion of the thruster part with the fission reactor as the core, also serves as the warhead charge, while the core reactor is responsible for detonating these propellants.

Compared with traditional warhead + propulsion part missiles, the advantage of this integrated missile is that it has a higher cost-effectiveness under the same volume, but its disadvantage is also very obvious - compared with conventional missiles that can easily replace different warheads to achieve different functions, it can only serve one purpose.

Even for this reason, it is impossible to achieve saturation penetration with clustered missile warheads at the end, and its unit cost is far higher than that of the Baghorn III, so large-scale penetration like the Baghorn III is no longer realistic. Therefore, its penetration strategy needs to be improved. The diameter of the new missile is similar to that of the Baghorn III, but its length is twice that of the Baghorn III. The Star Scorpion vertical launch unit that can load two Baghorn III missiles can just accommodate one new biological missile after removing the reloading system.

The longer but essentially unchanged diameter body is a compromise to fit directly into existing vertical launch cells, but it does indicate a completely different orientation, one that focuses more on penetrating through capability rather than numbers.
The missile body has a certain degree of armor protection, and is still a standard configuration of a multi-layer scale reactive armor structure with a high-temperature resistant material base. And the tail nozzle structure is more similar to that of a battleship, with a certain probability cloud maneuverability.

These nozzles are boldly designed to be adjustable through a series of special muscle tissues, similar to vector nozzles, but with a larger range of motion. Even the inner wall can be adjusted slightly to change the posture more flexibly.

The purpose of these structures is that, since this type of missile has a long range and needs to penetrate as far as possible, it needs to take into account both high speed and complex probability cloud maneuvers, and needs to adjust the range and angle of the probability cloud according to the distance.

It is envisioned that in long-range situations, the new missile will mainly use completely irregular probability cloud maneuvers to mainly guard against the enemy ship's more powerful turret-type secondary guns, while in close-range situations, the more accurate directed energy close-in defense guns will rely on the flaky reactive armor layer as much as possible to resist.

After all, it is unrealistic to dodge the light-speed attack of directed energy weapons at close range. It is better to concentrate on dodging close-in defense missiles and kinetic close-in defense systems, which are more powerful but relatively easier to dodge.

The kinetic close-in defense system used by the Ezki warships is a multi-barrel electromagnetic machine gun with a rotary tube design. The Ezki civilization calls this system a "fire storm", which can intercept incoming objects by spraying dense barrages like a rainstorm.

Although the accuracy is slightly inferior to that of directed energy weapons, the damage it can cause to the missile body is amazing. Therefore, in the face of these close-in defense systems, the new missile will use close-range evasive maneuvers as much as possible to try to penetrate.

As for close-in defense missiles, they are even easier to avoid. In short, the core of the new missile's penetration mode is to make it impossible for weapons that can instantly destroy itself to hit accurately, and weapons that can accurately hit cannot be destroyed instantly.

Compared with the previous planet-based Cornerstone series and ship-based Cornerstone series, the single-unit performance of the new missile can be said to be a leap forward. In addition, because it is more convenient to carry, the missile body has been transformed back to a shape similar to the traditional Cornerstone shell contour, and its name was also quickly decided by Lin Yi.

On the one hand, the right-angled hornstone type is a tribute to the first opponent that could be called an opponent. On the other hand, it is indeed a large hornstone like the right-angled hornstone that has both the body shape of a chambered hornstone and the swimming and predatory capabilities of an orthoclast. It is also a breakthrough compared to ordinary hornstones and is suitable for the new type of missile.

While the Helicopter-type long-range heavy biological missile was undergoing final development, another design for a long-range missile also began testing. Compared with the Helicopter-type, the positioning of this design is somewhat different. In theory, it can complement the Helicopter-type very well.

(End of this chapter)