>>(3) Missile electronics don't last against enemy ECM longer than 30
>>seconds in UF. Ship-to-ship combat is at close range. No 'missile
>>pods,' because missiles are not the main armament of UF ships.
>So, does this mean that you can use missiles, but only fast
>ones at very close range so as not to give shipborne ECM time to
>counter?

Personally I'm not keen on the "missiles can't deal with ECM" stuff - it has never rung true for me. I don't see why they wouldn't be just as effective as today's missiles - which are, frankly, still not as whizzy as the press makes them out to be. That's why there is active development in radar and IR jammers, decoys, etc - they all *work* to some degree in defeating missiles. Neither the missiles, nor the countermeasures, are 100% reliable. Neither one is a silver bullet. I can't picture a situation where countermeasure tech has so far outstripped weapons tech.

Now, missiles are somewhat obsolete in the world of long range energy weapons. You can't compete with the speed of light, of the instantaneous tracking and targetting you get with lasers, phasers, particle beams, etc. And I would expect the UF versions of Harpoon vs CIWS would be tilted in favor of the CIWS because 1) in space there is usually no surface clutter to hug to avoid detection and 2) see above about beam weapons and response time. See it, zot it. Of course, the way to go there is the 'swarm o' missiles' approach.

But dogfight missiles - the equal of the Sidewinder, ASRAAM, etc - should be just as useful in close combat.

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