R-45 Antiship Missile

The R-45 is a British made exoatmospheric antiship missile first entering service in 2328 and continuing in the R-45M variant with the British Royal Starfleet, among others.

The R-45 is approximately 45 meters long, 4.5 meters in diameter, and has a fully loaded mass of 85 tons. Standard payload is four independently self-guided Mk.19 Mod 2 Thermonuclear Detonation X-Ray Laser warheads with enhanced waveguide radiation case. Nominal yield of the Mk.19 is five megatons. Effective range of the x-ray laser barrage is 600 kilometers.

The R-45 also carries with it eight decoys/penetration aids to assist in overwhelming hostile point defense systems. Guidance is by remote pilot with autonomous target selection and homing capabilities. Main propulsion is a fusion torch with a sustained thrust of up to 6G for 200 seconds and a total delta-vee of 28 km/sec. The R-45 is considered to be a tactical weapon, as its high acceleration and low delta-vee make it unsuitable for long range engagements.

The warhead bus will separate following booster stage burnout, and will autonomously guide itself to the target from that point on. As it closes to within effective point defense range (which happens to be about the effective range of the x-ray detonation laser), the panels will open and the warhead carousels will fling the warheads and decoys away from the bus. Each warhead and decoy will then independently track the target, and when ready, the warheads will initiate their nuclear devices. The bus itself will attempt to steer a ramming course with the target if at all possible within its delta-vee constraints, further confounding the defenses as it is a large and massive target that will take considerable lasing to eliminate as a threat.

R-45s sold for export to non-proliferation nations are typically armed with eight to twelve kinetic penetrators in place of the nuclear warheads.

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