Often on these forums guided weapons get treated as something of an I win button that renders everything else meaningless. But how well does this actually stack up. Well at extreme ranges most modern combat aircraft can not only detect incoming guided missiles but either intercept the or out run the them. Counter measures have also proven highly effective such as chaff, flares, and decoys. Average success rate against such systems is usually only about one in four under ideal conditions. Modern warships also have considerable intercept systems with most estimates suggesting that to land a hit on something like a modern US navy destroyer sixteen or more missiles would have to be making an approach on a ship to have a real chance of landing a hit. Guided missiles such as cruise missiles are also expensive the US only having a few thousand in stock.

In space guided missiles would likely face a whole mess of problems. In most sci-fi settings they are typically used as a secondary weapon and usually, much like in Vietnam, fired in groups to maximize chance of successful hit.

What are your thoughts on this one folks? Mostly posting this for getting this group talking again.

5842828
The fact it's more advantage to use railguns and lasers seems to prove how useless guided missiles are in space. Remember space is huge and any space battle worth it socks has ships being able to use FTL. With a Star Trek warp? A hyperspace jump like in Star Wars? Both could be used disappear from the sensers (well in star Wars it's kindaimpossible to predict a hyperspace jump pre-Disney) Yeah just disappearing and reappeared could throw the damn things off. Guided missiles are better used in clustered battles or against large objects like space stations or planets if you ask me

5842828
With regards to space warfare, I can see guided munitions coming in handy in two ways:
A swarming screen of explosives that's impossible to completely counter, meant to deal large, decaying damage to armor or (if the tech is there) shielding no matter what.
A highly adaptable, single warhead - a torpedo, outfitted with it's own compliment of stealth technology and defensive systems, designed to sneak through the defensive screen of the enemy and deliver it's payload even if it's destroyed a distance away by usage of either an ultra-high yield nuclear detonation or high-powered EMP.

Today, missiles and cruise missiles aren't really obsolete, but the main thing that will evolve with them is stealth, how close it can get before countermeasures are even thought to be needed, and their ability to better change in accordance to how the target changes.

5842857
A valid point about the "speed" of the missiles. Stealth in space is a bit tricky, but launching a missile from say a rail or coil gun and using the thrusters to adjust could be highly effective.

5842891
That technology race does go both ways, and one must consider the price tag of a weapon that can only be used once.

5842828
It all depends upon how hard on the sci-fi scale we're going.