has no one ever thought of a mirv torpedo?

by mirv i might have wording wrong there not sure, i mean 1 torpedo that can carry upto 3 little torpedos that can then multiple lock on target differant places like front, middle and backside of target vessel, so you fire 1 torepedo like normal it gets near target like normal then it opens up or fires 3 little torpedos from nose cone area.

a couple of navies looked at this a few years back (end of cold war time). They never got past paper studies as they were found to be ineffective without a massive increase in diameter of the tubes and all the associated problems that brings. Each individual mini-topedo was thought to not have enough power to cause major damage.


Will try to dig out the reference i have.

MIRV stands for Multiple Independently-Targeted Reentry Vehicle. Unfortunately, torpedoes do not reenter anything really, so how about MITOTILFAOLTTNOCBBTDATMBTAAABOLNHTSITOADLACONG? Multiple Independently-Targeted Object That Is Launched From An Obscenely Large Tube That No One Can Be Bothered To Design And Then Manufacture Because They Are All A Bunch Of Lazy No Hopers That Sit In Their Offices All Day Looking At Calenders Of Naked Girls?

As maker of paper planes said, the tubes and other hardware required to make something like this successful would have to be massive.

Anyways, subs and ships have so many tubes to make something like this overkill, and torpedoes these days work by blowing up under the ship, creating a massive air-bubble which snaps the ship. You need a lot of explosive in one hit to do that, an effect which lots of smaller torpedoes would not be able to achieve.

they were working on the principle that the 'mirv-style' torpedo would punch multiple holes into a ship, which would prove extreamly hard for a damage repair crew to survive. the safety margins of warships at the time were very low and it was thought that multiple flooded compartments would render them ineffective (if the didnt sink, their stability would be all over the shop!)

the principle is sound in theory but as you say cracking the ships back is a much more effective method.

www.youtube.com...

Ignoring the narative in the film, that's a single Mk 48 (21") Torpedo impact, the same torpedo carried by our SSNs/SSBNs. As you can see, it's got more than enough power to take out a warship in a single shot. There's no need for multiple shots to "ensure it sinks" - one does the job just fine.

During WWII the US navy ran a study which concluded that a smaller number of larger depth charges was the more effective method of attack. I suspect the same applies for Torpedo hits: one large hit is more effective than several smaller ones of equal weight.

For a torpedo carrying 3 sub-munitions you would need a total of 4 seeker components, 4 propulsion systems and 3 warheads, all packaged into a tube 21 inches in diameter.

It just doesn't make sense when single hit torpedos are plenty effective.