That kind of innovation might allow far larger effectively guided salvos to be thrown from individual starfighters. Perhaps the real innovation of the XM-1 missile boat isn’t the SLAM engine, but rather a useful real-time networked tactical battlefield datalink that can aggregate targeting data, counter-ECM jamming, and computing power between the missile boats and other fighters/capital ships/ISTAR drones/ground bases. Noticeably the targeting seemed to significantly improve after the first two missiles are lost, and Kenobi is unable to shake the survivors off, even if the payloads are questionable. When the vulture was guiding 4 missiles, individual missile targeting was bad enough that two missiles collided with each other when Vader performed his barrel roll. Whenever we see fighters/bombers launching torpedoes of any sort against capital ships, it’s only in volleys of two missiles per salvo, which might suggest two represents an upper limit in the number of missiles that can be effectively targeted onto a capital ship and reasonably expect to penetrate jamming.Īt 2nd Coruscant, a Vulture droid fired and guided 4 missiles simultaneously at two Actis interceptors, which couldn’t possibly have much ECM on their tiny spaceframes. Targeting might be the biggest bottleneck in strikefighter operations.
