"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message ...
"Eunometic" wrote in message
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"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
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The site refered to at the begining of the thread refers to a switch
from solid propellant to liquid propulsion. This would appear to give
several advantages.

1 Higher specific impulse therfore speed and range.

And considerable increase in risk, liquid propellants in
the torpedo room - shudders !

Perhaps.

The Brits and the Ruskies may have screwed up H2O2 but the Swedes
definetly didn't. I don't think a lot of torpedo propulsion systems
are particularly nice to think about except for silver batteries.


2 The rocket-torpedo can be ejected from its own tube: manouever and
aligne itself towards the target at low speed by varying its thrust
and then accelerate at high speed rather than relying on a propellor
based system to achieve initial alignment.

Throttlable rocket engines are considerably more complex
and the risk to the launcher just went up again.

Once the move to liquid propellants has occured then throttling the
engine is relatively trivial. Hybrid liquid solid systems where the
relatively congeniel fuel is sprayed into a chamber lined with an
solid and stabalised oxidiser are a solution here.


3 After having intercepted its target at high speed it can slow down
for a 'look' using its terminal homing system and then re-alinge and
re-accelerate.


Not without turning off the gas generator for the supercavitation

And then restarting it at the same time it restarts its rocket motor.

I suspect a ballistic launch out of the water close to the ship with
infra-red or radar terminal homing followed either by skipping back
into the water or a direct attack is even an option.



I also can see why the system can't use a trailing wire command
guidence systemn as conventional torpedos and missiles use. It may
have uses as a torpedo intercept system.


That wire would trail behind the torpedo where the rocket exhaust is

Oops

Hellfire, HOT, TOW, Swingfire, Trigat, Milan all manage quite well and
they aren't even sea water cooled.

The Germans even have a small imaging infrared missile called Triton
(based on the air breathing Polyphem) that can be submarine launched
against both land, sea and air targets. It trails a fibre optic cable
and is rocket propelled through the water before exiting.



Keith