Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Itano Circus 
Major Lee demonstrating that more missiles are, in fact, better.
A tactic wherein a warcraft — often a Humongous Mecha — launches a massive salvo of missiles at a target, often more missiles than the craft should be able to hold. The missiles often follow artistic curving trajectories for no apparent reason, though strategically it may simply make them more difficult to dodge (or intercept, if there's any usable point defence). Occasionally, this is explained in Space Opera as the effect a ship's energy/force/gravity field has on the missiles.
These missiles usually robotech on their way to their target(s). Expect the target to try a Beehive Barrier to block the incoming ballistic barrage. A high speed missile dodge is usually an effective counter as well. A slightly more proactive solution is to launch your own missiles or, if you have the option of More Dakka, shooting them down. Trying to lead them away and crashing into an enemy is usually reserved for Ace Pilots.
Named after the Humongous Mecha in the Macross metaseries who fire swarms of missiles (specifically, 'micromissiles') that behave in precisely this way. It has also been called "Itano Circus" , after Ichiro Itano, who pioneered the most common aesthetic look of the MMM; and "Scott Bernarding," after the main character of the Third Generation of Robotech. Bernard frequently performed the MMM, even though ammunition such as missiles was supposed to be scarce.
There are several actual weapons that fire a Macross Missile Massacre. In fact a whole lot of real-life weapon systems are either designed or can be adapted to use this tactic, and if nothing else you can just gather a whole bunch of one-shot launchers together Hamas or Hezbollah-style; see Real Life examples below.
A form of Spam Attack, Death In All Directions, There Is No Kill Like Overkill, and Impossibly Cool Weapon. See also the related video game genre, Bullet Hell.
Examples:
open/close all folders
- Macross
- Taken to the extreme with the VF-25 Messiah Armored pack, which carries 210 Missiles, as demonstrated by the page image.
- Even in the Gundam Multiverse, the MMM is a viable tactic employed by the Dendrobium Orchis (One huge missle splits into at least 80 smaller ones), Heavyarms (Lots and lots of missle launchers), and Leopard (Expy of the above, same method). Specifically:
- Trowa Barton's Gundam Heavyarms from Gundam Wing. Despite an armament of 52 missiles + 36 homing missiles, instead of using them against multiple targets, he invariably launches all of them in a single barrage against a few targets.
- Ptolemaios II, the Celestial Being mothership from the second season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is heavily guilty of this. Gundam Arios (and to a much, much smaller extent, Gundam Cherudim) has been guilty of this too. But its support unit, GN Archer, really takes the cake, especially considering its relatively smaller dimensions.
- Taken to another level by the Gundam Dendrobium of Gundam 0083. Its basic "Stamen" form is a conventional RX-78 clone with no missiles at all. But when it docks with the "Orchis" mobile armor, it can launch a salvo of almost TWO THOUSAND missiles.
- If this seems like overkill, pause to think that the Dendrobium Orchis is much larger than the average MA, closer to the size of a ship. Actually, it's still overkill...
- Justified: the GP-03 was designed to be the Humongous Mecha equivalent to a One Man Army (space-only); a heavy-weapons platform designed for a prolonged fight without needing to rearm for extended periods of time.
- Parodied in Love Hina Again, where Kaolla Su uses missile launchers attached to her arms and legs to generate the effect. Subverted somewhat in the Love Hina Spring Movie, when the latest incarnation of Mecha Tama does not, in fact, have unlimited missiles. It runs out.
- Used in Cowboy Bebop, particularly prominently in the episode "Gateway Shuffle", in which a baddie fires a giant missile full of a biological payload which the goodies attempt to intercept, which then splits into three missiles. They destroy all but one and are about to blow up the last when it splits into thousands more missiles.
- Not surprisingly, The Big O also carries a stupidly large number of missiles in its chest cavity. Unfortunately, while they are deployed nearly every episode, their total destructive power barely rivals that of a road flare.
- The anime Zoids had various individuals who enjoyed this trope, most notably Leena Toros in the New Century Zero series. Her only attack in an entire episode typically consisted of one giant Macross Missile Massacre, usually launched while shouting "Wild Weasel Unit Total Assault!!"
- This was also the main attack method of the Panzer armour of the Liger Zero- which overheated the Zoid so much that the armour had to be ejected after using it. Fortunately, it's re-usable.
- The attack was first used to destroy an entire armada of flying enemies. Then later, it was used to destroy the chunks of a satellite so large its impact was going to devastate most of a continent. When locking onto its targets, it achieved so many missle locks that the cockpit sprouted new monitors in order to keep the targets on screen. He even fires missles from his *tail*.
- Zoids Genesis had Ron and his Bamboo Lion, who carried a limited number of cartridges with him anywhere he went, but they were usually key to destroying enemy bases, escaping, or otherwise taking down enemies that no one else could realistically fight.
- Project: A-Ko: B-Ko's "Akagiyama Missiles".
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann the Missile Massacre is a favored "tactic" of Attenborough, who is prone to pushing the Fire button of the warships without warning, hence his nickname Beamspam McMuppet.
- It does become useful later on when the Missile Massacre simultaneously hits every point at every time in the universe, annihilating the entire enemy force throughout all times, until that point it never really does much.
- Simon did something similar to this a couple of times with projectile drills.
- Not to mention Rossiu had a small Crowning Moment Of Awesome for himself as he takes over while Simon rests after that projectile drill attack—he weaves and dodges the Gurren-Lagann through a veritable three-ring Itano Circus worth of missiles.
- DAKKA. COMPLETE WITH RAINBOW TRAILS.
- In the second movie, Yoko pulls off one of these by herself right after Kittan's death. The camera has to pull back a few times to show the sheer number of Anti-Spiral mechs she destroyed in one salvo.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, the Sagitta Magica spell is a common attack spell that launches anywhere from one to a hundred and ninety-three homing elemental blasts at a target, making it a 4M(Macross Magic Missile Massacre). Chachamaru did this at the end of the first anime adaptation using a pactio power.
- In early episodes of Space Runaway Ideon this appears to be the Ideon's only method of attack. In later episodes, when said missiles have (literal?) god-like power, this will easily devastate fleets.
- Digimon: In the first, third, and fourth seasons, at least one character's highest digivolution is an insanely weapon-laden cyborg. Season three has the baddest: the Humongous Mecha-sized Saint Galgomon/Mega Gargomon has literally hundreds of missiles of all sizes that come from various hidden compartments all over his body. (However, this attack, while cool-looking, seldom finishes a fight. They just soften the bad guy up for the two hugely oversized (and oddly happy) shoulder missiles which are the finisher.)
- A sequence in School Rumble had Harima racing to deliver his finished manga manuscript to the publisher while riding a giant curry dish as a sled. A truck carrying frozen tuna crashed—and fired its cargo at him, Macross Missile Massacre style.
- The Nirvana from Vandread shoots lasers this way, with the bonus that they can circumvent friendly troops while streaking toward their target.
- Not only Nirvana, Rabat's pet Orangutan is also intelligent enough to pilot a robot. "Intelligent" meaning, getting strapped in and firing 3M's at anything that moves 'til it runs out of ammo. When she used it the last time, she got lucky since Nirvana's crews are actually more than ready to resupply her.
- Even the small fighter craft are fully capable and willing to spew out several times their vehicular mass in missiles at the drop of a hat.
- While not technically a complete Macross Missile Massacre, the ending battle in OVA 5 of the air combat series Sento Yousei Yukikaze resembles a pseudo 3M, as every surviving aircraft is remotely taken over by the Yukikaze AI and salvo fires all of their remaining missiles simultaneously. The result is several hundred to several thousand full-sized Air to Air missiles blanketing the horizon. Called a pseudo 3M because all those missiles really were needed and because all of the aircraft carried a finite and generally realistic number of missiles individually.
- Kaoruko from Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge often does this with her Powered Armor, which has four missile launchers (two on her legs, two on her arms) that fire like this.
- Spells from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, such as Axel Shooter and Plasma Lancer, invokes this image, only using balls or blades of energy. A straighter example can also be found in the Type-2 Gadget Drones of the third season, which launches salvoes of small missiles as one of its attacks.
- In Nanoha, if any character (particularly shown: Fate and Chrono) using an attack with "... Shift", you can expect massive missile rain.
- We thought Fate had reached the epitomy of this with Photon Lancer, Phalanx Shift. Then Reinforce turned it against her: Photon Lancer, Genocide Shift.
- Reinforce (that now dead Reinforce, mind you) also using similar move, called Blood Dagger. Probably can be used by Hayate, too.
- A variation, Mashiro Rima accomplishes this using six juggling pins, hitting a target as small as an (highly manoeuvrable) egg in Shugo Chara.
- In Kirameki Project a giant fighting mecha called "The Perfect" fires a ridiculously large salvo of missiles at a magical girl, Nene.
- In Samurai Pizza Cats, Lucille has this occur when she's upset, and the projectiles are stored within her hair.
- Crest Of The Stars and its sequels made their battleships purely missile platforms that take Macross Missile Massacre to the absolutely ridiculous extent (the majority of the mass of ships multiple kilometers long consists solely of thousand and thousands of missiles). The sheer weight of fire ONE battleship could deliver would put David Weber to shame. Of course, they were almost entirely Point Defenseless, but that's another matter.
- In the Suzumiya Haruhi anime, Kyon does this with a bunch of fireworks from his bike, proving that even he is willing to do something stupidly dangerous for the sake of a Shout Out.
- Two-thirds into Code Geass R2, Jeremiah Gottwald new mecha, Sutherland Sieg, fires a huge missile barrage he refers to as... THE STORM OF HIS LOYALTY!!!
- Eureka Seven features the Macross Missile Massacre prominently, in both missile and "homing laser" form. Unsurprisingly, it shares a mechanical designer with the Macross franchise.
- Gokudera's Rocket Bombs in Katekyo Hitman Reborn tend to be used like this.
- Pokemon: In the third season's "The Big Balloon Blow-Up," Team Rocket fires miniature missiles at a chasing Noctowl and Pikachu. At least six rounds of at least six missiles in two small rocket launchers were fired in the episode, and the launchers couldn't possibly hold more than one round. Period.
- Kouji Kabuto pulls this off in the final episode of Shin Mazinger, with Rocket Punches, no less.
Comic Books
- In the Apocalypse War plotline of Judge Dredd, East-Meg One destroys half of Mega-City One with nuclear missiles that split into smaller missiles, filling the entire skyline. They retaliate, with no success.
Fan Works
- In An Entry with a Bang!, Clancy-Earth aircraft throw a lot of missiles around. Then again, given how tough Battletech armour is, this is rather necessary.
Film
- In The Last Starfighter, the GunStar 1's "Death Blossom", takes out an entire fleet of enemy fighters in seconds.
- In Avatar, an entire fleet of helicopter things each launch all their missiles in rapid succession to defeat a tree.
- This is kind of the point of the Hailfire Droid's existance
- The Jericho Missile of the Iron Man movie, which starts off as a single missile that splits up in mid-air. As Tony himself describes it...
Tony Stark: They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it... and it's worked out pretty well so far. I present to you the newest in Stark Industries' Freedom line. Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I personally guarantee, the bad guys won't even wanna come out of their caves. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration... the Jericho.
- The new Star Trek movie has a Romulan Cool Ship called the Narada that seems to have missile tubes coming out the yin-yang, and those missiles themselves are fragmenting. It gets more interesting when you learn that the Narada is a mining vessel that has been hastily converted into a warship and that the missiles it fires are developed by the Romulans from reverse-engineered Borg technology. Repeat after me, There Is No Kill Like Overkill.
- Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Henry V and its famous scene when all of the longbow archers fire simultaneously.
- Which was a standard tactic for massed archers since ancient times. But if we count this, don't we have to count every period war movie from Pharaohic Egypt to the American Civil War?
- The Humongous Mecha (very Real Robot, interestingly) sequence in District 9 has an awesome example.
- The director, Neill Blomkamp, referenced the 3M almost by name in the DVD commentary.
Literature
- This is standard military operating procedure in the Honor Harrington Space Opera series by David Weber. The in-story justification is to overwhelm the computerized defensive systems of enemy vessels. (A.K.A. the Manticore Missile Massacre.)
- To add to the awe-inspiring slaughter, given that the missiles are for delivering bomb-pumped lasers, with the tens of thousands (or much more) missiles launched, even accounting for countermeasures to defend against that, it also makes your average fleet engagement in the Honorverse an exercise in Beam Spam as well. Add the tribarrel for More Dakka goodness, and you have the Hat Trick of spam attacks.
- Also the trope is played straight in the later part of the series with medium combatants (cruisers, destroyers, battlecruisers) that get the opportunity, through off bore targeting missiles, to fire all their on board launchers at a single target. Considering that the launchers are fixed in position, for all the missiles to hit some of them will have to robotech to hit their targets. Also it's standard practice to have the missiles spreading so as not to kill one another with their drives, which begets, you guessed it, more roboteching.
- Done to an American convoy in Red Storm Rising. although that's with many aircraft flying two or three missiles each..
- In the Antares novels, an attack carrier is a converted freighter carrying about ten thousand nuclear missiles each. In the first novel, the Ryall send three of these against Sandar. The purpose is to overwhelm planetary defense computers—oh, and to cause destruction on an untold scale.
- Generator's arm bracers in the Whateley Universe. Her friends said she'd been watching too much Project: A-Ko.
- Snubfighters in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the X Wing Series in particular, can each carry only so many missiles, which can only be fired one or two at a time. But when there are multiple twelve-pilot squadrons, that can add up. By timing it so that the proton torpedoes hit the same spot at the same time, they can take out capital ships. Even Star Destroyers.
- Special mention absolutely must go to Booster Terrik's station from The Bacta War - three hundred torpedo and missile launchers. It was all a ruse, with only the sensors in place, but the weapons themselves were loaded onto freighters and put to use against Lusankya later. The actual first salvo clocked in at eighty missiles (still enough to disable a small Star Destroyer, per shot).
- UNSC warships in the Halo novels are capable of firing very large numbers of Archer missiles. The typical Archer pod contains 30 missiles, and even small ships like a frigate have over two-dozen pods, resulting in total payload of hundreds of missiles (perhaps thousands for larger ships). Unfortunately for the UNSC, all those missiles are useless against a Covenant warship if its shields are up, and even if its shields are down, its point defense lasers can shoot down a large portion of even a large volley of Archer missiles.
- It is also mentioned a single Archer missile is capable of disabling or outright destroying smaller human ships, so either warships were severely overpowered in engagements or the Human-Covenant war prompted the upgrade.
- In addition, the typical tactic against covenant warships was to launch a Macross Missile Massacre to weaken the shields before shooting a MAC round or two.
Live Action TV
- Happens during a major battle in Stargate SG-1. Jack uses an Ancient command chair to destroy Anubis' mothership with a veritable legion of Drone missiles, which compensates for being grossly unnecessary in volume with its sheer awesome.
- Though, to be fair, Anubis survives.
- The Ancient drone weapons were apparently designed specifically for this tactic, but in Stargate Atlantis the team never had enough to spare because of limited supplies. Apparently in the war against the Wraith, the Ancients themselves couldn't produce enough to deal with their onslaught.
- Well, they only had a few dozen during the Battle of Atlantis at the end of the first season, but after the events in the second season episode The Tower Sheppard claims they were able to trade medical supplies and an IDC for enough drones to restock Atlantis.
- A more straight up example is when the Daedalus ambushes a pair of hive ships in the episode "No Man's Land" and the ship rapidly deploys it's entire battery of VLS launched nuclear missiles and has them fan out into a wave while trying to overwhelm the fighter screen of a Wraith hive ship. It partially works.
- Kamen Rider has more than one example:
- Kamen Rider Ryuki: All Riders have a "Final Vent". Most of them are melee attacks that create perhaps a man-sized explosion at best. The Final Vent of Kamen Rider Zolda, on the other hand, is a barrage of dozens upon dozens of missiles resulting in a humongous explosion and frequently beating the shit out of several other Riders. It is appropriately named "End of World".
- Kamen Rider 555: The super-charged bike of Kamen Rider Kaixa has a mecha mode that can fire one of these.
- Kamen Rider Den-O: Boistous Shot, Climax Form's Gun Form-based 'Charge And Up' finisher is this.
- Kamen Rider Double: LunaTrigger's finisher, "Trigger Full Burst", is this. A rather neat trick considering it's laser bullets and not missiles that are doing the trajectory curving, but the Luna form combinations regularly break the laws of physics anyways.
- Happens routinely on the new Battlestar Galactica. Cylon basestars are especially prone to firing gigantic salvos of missiles (with cool vapor trails) that home in on the Galactica. If Galactica is on top of its game, the missiles get shot down by Vipers and the battlestar's anti-aircraft guns. If not, expect some breakage.
- Racetrack's Raptor in the Grand Finale
- Two Cylon Raiders use one of these to kill the non-FTL capable civillain fleet in the miniseries. Granted, there were enough targets to justify the manoeuvre.
- In Babylon 5, the Shadows' planet killer fires 13,000 missiles at its intended target...a planet. They burrow into the planet and then detonate underneath the crust for hundreds of Megatons EACH. This results in a tectonic shock that causes the planet to "literally fall apart from the inside out".
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine, though it doesn't quite match the aesthetic, has Deep Space Nine launch 5000 photon torpedoes at an invading Klingon force.
- Specifically, in the episode "The Way of the Warrior", the titular station surprises an attacking Klingon fleet with a bevy of newly installed weapons, including rotating photon torpedo launchers that pretty much fill the intervening space with antimatter missiles.
- The favored tactic of Andromeda in the early seasons. At one point a FLEET of ships did so, which one captain described as 'Carpet Bombing Space'. It was pretty impressive.
- Done several times on Mythbusters to test various rocket myths. Notable one being the alcohol myths episode where the build team tested a Korean arrow launcher.
Tabletop Games
- Rifts has several mecha who can do this, being mounted with Mini Missile launchers that carry obscene loads of small missiles almost designed to be used in this way. Not unsurprising as Palladium Books also published an RPG based on the Robotech franchise that used the same system.
- The Robotech RPG was released prior to Rifts, and was the first instance of the name "Mini Missile" actually being used.
- Both Eldar Dark Reaper Reaper Launchers and Space Marine Heavy Bolters are described in the Warhammer 40000 fluff as firing many miniature missiles and firing rocket-propelled rounds respectively, although scale-wise those are closely to More Dakka. The Tau get a Missile (Im)Barrage on their Skyray Missile Gunships, not to mention multi-launch missile systems on their battlesuits. The Sisters of Battle have Exorcist artillery
tanks organs that do this. Space Marines also have multiple missile tubes on their Whirlwinds, but not to as over-the-top extents as with Skyrays or Exorcists.
- By the way, those Exorcists? They're fired by Sisters who play the keys of the pipe organ that serves as the launcher for the rockets.
- Cthulhu Tech, homage-storm that it is, features rocket-pods that use exactly this method as heavy weapons for their Humongous Mecha. The big winner is the Cherub-class Engel, a middling-sized support mech that can hit a target with up to a dozen rockets at once.
- Dungeons And Dragons 3.5 has one Prestige Class, the Force Missile Mage, dedicated to turning the Magic Missile spell into this.
- Not quite, the Force Missile Mage just adds an additional two missiles, making a total of seven for a high level caster. However, if you combine this with creative use of Metamagic (namely Quicken Spell and Twin Spell) one can easily fire off as many as 28 in a single turn, if you use Delay Spell you can end up with over fifty Magic Missiles going off at once.
- And like everything in Dn D tactics like this can be optimized to insane extremes, as can be seen in this set up which launches well over a hundred orbs of force and does just a hair under 4000 damage on average.
- Battletech, for a long time only used their missiles this way. The individual missiles themselves were rather weak though, and could only do damage in numbers or through a lucky hit. With the exception of artillery and warship-mounted missiles (which soon became extinct in the main setting), it was centuries before somebody revisited the concept of a powerful missile. Some mechs that are practically made of this trope. Gaze upon the Yeoman◊, ye mighty, and despair!
- The vehicular 'SRM Carrier' has 18 6-packs of short range missiles (thats 108 missiles per shot, thank you). One *will* sand all the armor of the biggest mech in the game. The tricky part is living to take the *second* shot.
- Also worth noting: standard BattleTech missiles are individually actually very small. One metric ton of long-range missile ammo for example consists of 120 individual missiles (launchable in salvos of 5, 10, 15, or 20), which works out to each of them weighing 8 1/3 kg or about 18.4 lbs. This puts them firmly in the 'man-portable' weight class, and indeed missile-equipped infantry exists in the game, but well below 'real' real life rocket artillery or guided missiles. (The WW 2 Katyusha mentioned in the Real Life section below fired salvos of individual missiles weighing five times this much.)
- In GURPS, firing a sufficient number of projectiles at an enemy gives a free increase in accuracy because it's harder to get out of the way. Unfortunately the rules don't allow for a successful MMM (more than a fraction hitting) except on a critical success.
- Unless the projectiles are guided or homing, then they kinda just hit stuff, pretty much regardless.
- In the "Interstellar Wars" setting for Traveller, this is standard Vilani naval doctrine.
Video Games
- Any game based on Macross, of course. There's a whole bunch of 'em.
- Mushihimesama - missles like the world has never seen before. And probably never will again.
- At least one type of weapon/plane/bombs in every "shoot 'em up" arcade game.
- The giant mecha in Armored Core can be designed with massive missile supplies, in some cases firing dozens of light missiles at a time. Given the agility of some opposing mecha, and the cost of replacing missile stores, this isn't a popular option, but it certainly has a place.
- In the fourth installment, combining Macross Missile Massacres with hit-and-run tactics is arguably the safest, and cheapest, way of disposing of enemy mecha—at least, if you're not up against a skilled human opponent.
- Bangai-O, a fairly obscure Dreamcast game, follows this trope to the letter. Your tiny Mecha can release up to 400 missiles at once, which all have the ability to home in on your target. If you haven't played this game, you should.
- In Bangai-O Spirits, Missile Massacres halve in number and double in size when they go over a hundred, so while the Bangai-O can't actually release 400 missiles, it can reach up to 100 quadruple size missiles. And it's still enough to lag the DS's graphical renderer (The game knows this, and will warn you about it in the tutorial). And it's still a bucket of fun.
- But if you have the reflect EX attack on, you reflect more than 800 missiles at your enemies, in addition to the 100 you can already launch.
- Note: this is a main feature of the game and some parts of the game REQUIRE you to do this to have a fighting chance. And THEN there's the bosses that will do this to YOU as well, which results in a 3M being used to COUNTER another 3M (each launching 400 missiles). This is as awesome as it sounds.
- How it works is the EX attack is charged by danger. The more enemies and bullets the are near you, the more awesome the Macross Missile Massacre is. It's effectively a smart bomb, and you use it to get you out of trouble. The game encourages you to get in trouble and then use it. If you destroy an insane amount of enemies, and then collect the fruit from them, you can actually gain temporary invincibility. This is also as awesome as it sounds.
- The Battle Tech series has two main missile types: Short Range Missiles and Long Range Missiles. SRMs are shot, according to the launcher type, in salvos of two, four and six. LRMs, in contrast, are shot in salvos of five, ten, and rather more ridiculously fifteen and twenty. Super-heavy Mechs can be armed with as many launchers as their weight allows, one can mount, say, six LRM20s on a single mech. Shooting them all at once causes a barrage of 120 guided missiles that will overpower any anti-missile system and very probably destroy any Mech in one shot.
- That's assuming the missiles hit, of course, depending on how lucky you are with the dice. However, two more missile types do exist: Medium Range Missiles and Clan-only Advanced Tactical Missiles. ATMs come in launcher sizes of three, six, nine and twelve missiles, but MRMs are loaded in salvos of ten, twenty, thirty, or forty. Good luck hitting something with it, though—MRMs are naturally inaccurate.
- Then there's XRMs, which are practically cruise missiles. As a sidenote, always turn off your night vision mode (even during night missions!) in Mechwarrior 4 before launching a missile volley. I've been blinded too many times by forgetting to turn it off before launching a barrage of MRMs. 240 of them, in fact.
- Pandora in Devil May Cry 4 has a flying missile platform mode capable of pulling this off. In the third game, Kalina Ann had the "Hysteric" move which launched cluster micro missiles.
- Most missile systems available to the player in Project: Sylpheed work this way. The heaviest is capable of launching 60 missiles at once.
- The Isaac's Greater Missile Storm spell is animated this way in Neverwinter Nights 2.
- The spell also exists in the expansions to Neverwinter Nights, where it's almost a Game Breaker for its absurd damage potential when the Maximize Spell feat is applied to it.
- And if that wasn't bad enough; imagine a spellcaster throwing two Maximised IGMSs out while Time Stop is in effect. Imagine what that would look like to the poor bastard/s on the other end!
- The Project Snowblind rocket launcher has two firing modes. The primary one fires an unguided rocket, but the alternate firing mode splits this rocket into four independently targeting, homing minimissiles.
- Hijack a artillery tank in Red FactionGuerilla , turn on cool turrets, and go to a large EDF base. Hold down the left trigger the entire time.
- In Freespace 2, you can arm your fighter with 2 types of missile that fire off four (or 8 if you double fire) mini missiles. They also home in.
- Sadly, you can't load up completely on these and fire all of your ordnance racks at once, although you could (if you were good and fast) fire all of them in very quick succession.
- In Wing Commander Prophecy and it's sequel, Wing Commander Secret Ops, the player on occasion has access to the Wasp interceptor. One of it's weapons is the Swarmer, a launcher that with each shot fires eight missiles that track your locked target—as long as you keep your target within your front view, otherwise the Swarmers will lose lock and fly off aimlessly. If you possess the piloting skills to keep your target in your view (often not possible without jettisoning the Wasp's booster), it's a one-shot kill. See also the Tracker, which is 4 Friend-or-Foe missiles connected to one common launch body that eventually splits off into its separate missiles.
- To a lesser degree than a full MMM, using the salvo function, one can dump all of one's missiles in a short time. This is a cheap way to kill "Flash" in the sim contest in Wing Commander III, if you don't want to take forever to kick the little twerp's ass. This method also works on potting Thrakhath after the Behemoth is destroyed in the Loki system, but in the Kilrathi Saga version of WC3, unlike the initial DOS release, the instant Thrakhath dies your carrier jumps out, even if there's still time left on the countdown. Of course, being The Dragon, Thrakhath returns at the end anyway, even if you do kill him and get to land.)
- The military chopper fought in Half-Life 2 that can inexplicably spew out a gigantic swarm of several times its own vehicular mass in antipersonnel mines, and will do so repeatedly just to show you it can.
- Interestingly, the most memorable version of this attack actually spawned from a glitch. When you nearly have the chopper taken down, it will start spamming mines in a gigantic three-line stream, covering wherever you are with explosives. This used to be a glitch, but when Valve discovered how effective it was and the lasting memories it impressed upon players, they turned it into a tactic.
- HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW!?
- A rather early example can be found in the intro of the 1997 game, Pax Imperia. "You didn't have to use those Swarm Missiles, did you?"
- The Rocket Pods upgrade for the Comanches in Command And Conquer: Generals lets them utterly saturate a small area with a storm of rockets, and is extremely effective at stopping tank rushes. The Rocket Buggy, another unit from the same game can do a similar attack that is equally effective.
- In Red Alert 2, the Allied Aegis missile cruiser starts off as a powerful anti-air unit that fires damaging missiles at targets. However, as it begins to rack up kills and gain promotions (which isn't too hard as it's pretty good at its job) it gets becomes even MORE powerful and fires missiles nonstop.
- And in Red Alert 3, we have the Rocket Angels, who do this whenever they're not using their paralysing whip.
- And also in Red Alert 3, we have Soviet Dreadnoughts that can utterly spam targets with missiles—really, really huge missiles (these are full battleships after all), but at the expense of the unit's health. Allied IFVs and missile turrets can spam nearly as bad as a Rocket Angel, however, if you put a Javelin soldier in there, and the Soviet Twin Blade attacks targets simply by unloading a ton of rockets onto it.
- The third installment of the Tiberian series, Tiberium Wars, features Nod Stealth Tanks that shower enemy targets with missiles, a feat that their older versions couldn't do as effectively in the previous games.
- Samus Aran of Metroid fame generally ends up with a veritable Hyperspace Arsenal of missiles. In Metroid Prime 2 she gains the ability to lock on and fire five of them simultaneously.
- You remember that section in "Beam Spam"? About how people freak out and fire on seeing or hearing a Metroid? This is how they react in Metroid Prime 3, since they're using Ice Missiles now.
- Meta-Ridley in Metroid Prime has a multi-missile attack, in which he launches several missiles, complete with the curving trajectory.
- At the beginning of Act 5 of Metal Gear Solid 4, Liquid's futuristic floating fortress Outer Haven launches one of these against the approaching USS Missouri. This results in a Crowning Momentof Awesome for the Missouri when she manages to shoot down nearly the entire swarm and destroy the launchers with WW 2-era flak cannons and naval guns... and the couple of modern Phalanx CIWS she has, but it's still a Crowning Momentof Awesome.
- During the final moments of the act immediately preceding this, you can pull off your own with the weapon systems provided by Metal Gear REX. Action Commands accessable during your incredibly awesome boss battle with RAY will even let you grind Liquid Ocelot into the dirt with a missile barrage if you catch him while he's downed.
- In Unreal Tournament 2004 onward, there is the Cicada. It is an airborne vehicle that fires missiles in quick succession. The alt-fire lets you target a spot and load up to 24 missiles. Boom.
- In Fable, the spell "Multi Shot" lets you do this with a bow and arrow. Keep in mind that the arrows will Robotech en-route to their target, so using this in an enclosed space will result in only one or two arrows hitting the target, while the walls around you will resemble a feathery pincushion.
- The two expansion sets for Star Wars: TIE Fighter featured a new Imperial prototype fighter known as the Missile Boat, which was armed with four Missile Launchers capable of holding different types of missiles pending on the mission objectives, a Tractor Beam, Shields, a Hyper Drive and a SLAM System which doubled the Missile Boat's speed momentarily while draining laser energy (to compensate, the Missile Boat had only a single laser). Admittedly it was specifically designed to counter the threat of the renegade Admiral Zaarin's new TIE Defenders (two Advanced Concussion Missiles dual-fired will destroy a TIE Defender outright even with full shields), but the two launchers that usually held Advanced Concussion Missiles had 20 each. That's a maximum of 80 Advanced Concussion Missiles which you can fire with a few second cooldown, two after another, without limit until you run out of missiles... Not only did this allow the Missile Boat to smash any other starfighter with relative ease, it could also singlehandedly take down large warships with little difficulty. It makes you wonder why the Empire didn't cut back on warships and make more Missile Boats.
- Unsurprisingly, the multiplayer-oriented sequel X-Wing vs TIE Fighter excluded the Missile Boat for being too much of a Game Breaker, though the later X-Wing: Alliance included a nerfed version in its multiplayer mode. The missile spam aspect remained intact, though; it was the ludicrous speed and agility that were toned down.
- In Warhawk, there is a weapon for the titular aircraft to use known as the Swarm Missile, which can lock on as many times as you want before firing, with the only limit being how many you have. Naturally, this can get extreme.
- In Ace Combat 6 there's the special weapon of the CFA-44 Nosferatu called the ADMM which is a missile that launches a Macross Missile Massacre. Yes I said that right, a MISSILE that launches a Macross Missile Massacre. Unlike all the other "Multi-Tgt" missiles, each Macross Missile Massacre equals one expended missile (out of up to eighteen) and not however many targets you locked onto, usually up to four, or six with the new XMA6 air-to-air missile... it's even enough to (usually) negate the "inefficiency" flaw of air-to-ground missiles.
- Unfortunately that weapon is banned on Xbox Live, as even its long reload time (and the inability to fire a Macross Missile Massacre against one target) doesn't balance out this essential trait.
- No it can unleash it on a single plane but it's a waste of perfectly good missles.
- Calling for friendly support also results in an impressive number of smoke trails, albeit from multiple planes.
- Warship Gunner 2 can have this depending on what missile systems you've installed on your warship, especially if you've mounted a Vertical Launch System (VLS) and the Aegis (allowing multiple simultaneous targets, up to nine at Level 3). Since anti-aircraft missiles (and their VLS version) are autofire-capable, you'll get this when you hold L2 for manual countermeasures — the AI will aim and fire all autofire-capable weapons — or use a certain system that applies that to all weapons.
- Golden Sun: The Lost Age has the Daedalus summon, which has the immediate effect of summoning a Macross Missile Massacre and then the delayed effect of launching a single, much more devastating missile at the end of the turn after the summon is used.
- In Sonic Adventure 2, the Tails/Eggman mechs can produce one of these in the second boss battle and in 2P battle mode. Eggman also has one of these on his "Egg Dealer" robot in Shadow The Hedgehog.
- In Time Splitters: Future Perfect, the rocket launcher can be set to fire six rockets in rapid succession, in accordance with rule #37.
- The Marza Dreadnaught's Missile Barrage in Sins Of A Solar Empire release absolutely massive amount of missiles. Just think of a large spaceship sitting duck, release missiles to hit every enemy ships in large radius for 60 seconds. It's as deadly as it sounds, if you don't get disabled, that is.
- The First Person Shooter Rise Of The Triad had the Drunk Missile, which fired five missiles which flew in a wild pattern and tracked enemies. Firing "drunks" into a crowd of enemies resulted in a huge, gibletty mess.
- The Skyray Missile Gunship of the Tau in Dawn Of War pretty much does the same as its counterpart in the ''tabletop game: Burning the Enemies of the Greater Good with a wave of missiles to the ground. Same for the Sisters of Battle Exorcist.
- This is how Ork Tank Bustaz work in Dawn Of War 2, they even come with a the ability "barrage" which lets them fire their roketz all at once in da air to rain death upon their foes.
- The Terran Valkyrie of Starcraft: Brood War can fire up to 12 missiles simultaneously at different targets, with a fairly high firing rate. These are cheap air units that are intended to be used in large groups, so seeing a dozen valkyries throwing out over a thousand missiles in about ten seconds is not uncommon.
- The Vulture gunship from Halo Wars has the Barrage ability wherein it launches a salvo of missiles at a ground target. It's also equipped with two air-to-air missile launchers.
- Pelican dropships can also be equipped for a missile massacre. This is most visible at the end of the Halo 3 campaign level Sierra 117 in which a single Pelican blows two Covenant Phantoms to hell with a relentless bombardment of missiles. It will also shoot at any surviving Covenant infantry, often to comedic effect.
- The ranged special attack of Ruru in Magical Battle Arena has her launching a barrage of homing drill missiles.
- The RYNO (or "Rip You a New One") in Ratchet And Clank functions by spamming a hail of missiles at everything in shooting range.
- Later versions, such as the upgraded forms of the third game's RY3NO, hybridise this with Beam Spam into a spray of light/missile/whatever darts that disintegrate their opponents. Overkill? What's that?
- The WWII MMO naval-simulation game Navyfield contains an interesting case, in that instead of missiles there are torpedoes. Quite a few Japanese ships in the game could be outfitted with a stupidly large number of torpedo launchers, which allows for massive 3M-type volleys of torpedoes (a practice the Navyfield community calls "torp-whoring"). Add to that the fact that the Japanese side uses the Long Lance torpedoes (which, historically, were the longest-range unguided torpedoes ever built, with a 20-mile range), plus the fact that said torps seem to explode with the force of a small atomic bomb, even when they self-destruct (and thereby sinking or severely damaging any ship that's too close by), and it's no wonder that torp-whoring is quite controversial among the Navyfield community.
- The Mirak race in Star Trek: Starfleet Command have this trope as their hat. Out of all the races, their ships are the only one that can put out such an ungodly amount of missiles.
- The titular Limit Break of Afterburner Climax allows the player's fighter to lock onto all visible targets and launch missiles at all of them. That number does go over ten often. Of course, the player ends up on the receiving end of this often too, not just from the numerous enemy planes launching at once, but in late-game also from lone planes as well..
- In Air Rivals, most missiles are usually fired two or four at a time. However, if using certain skills in conjunction with a certain weapon, it is possible to fire 42 missiles per salvo (which can be fired every few seconds or so). Using specialized weapons with increased rate-of-fire might achieve an even greater amount of missiles over time.
- Cid Highwind from Final Fantasy VII can call a minor massacre from his airship as a Limit Break.
- In Contra III: The Alien Wars, a monumental number of missiles (and not small ones, either) is shot at one of Red Falcon's flying fortresses. The player has to destroy the forcefield protecting the fortress' core, leaping from missile to missile as they impact and detonate. And not jumping from foothold to foothold, either, but handhold to handhold, with a single hand (the other wields a weapon, of course.) Once the field is down, the player can allow the missiles to hit, although most of them will be destroyed by flares coming out of the core unless the player dissipates them first.
- X3: Terran Conflict introduced the dedicated M7-M class missile frigates which replaced the gun turrets of a regular M7 with missile bays. Load up, hold the launch button, and watch gleefully as an almost uninterrupted stream of missiles pour into your chosen target. For an added bonus: load some of the multiple warhead missiles.
- In World Of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King Expansion Pack, Mages who spec deeply into Arcane can get a Talent called Missile Barrage, which, on proc, turns their next casting of Arcane Missiles into this.
- A mission in Northrend has your character riding a gnomish helicopter defending a dig site from incoming gargoyles. There is a missile attack that is exactly this, including the randomly spiraling missile paths, smoke trails and More Dakka. Given the number of other Shout Outs in World Of Warcraft it would be no surprise if this were a direct Shout Out to the original MMM.
- Fraxy gives you the missile part, which fires 5 missiles before reloading at rank 100. What if someone added an event to loop the missile launching?
- In City Of Heroes, the Macross Missile Massacre is often the first attack used by the Malta Group's Zeus Class Titan. After their second upgrade, a Robotics Mastermind's Assault Bot gains this ability.
- While ships in EVE Online can have up to eight missile racks, all missiles launched from a ship originate from the same spot, causing simultaneously launched missiles to travel in a neat, glowing ball'o'death instead of a swarm.
- The upcoming Dominion expansion introduces the fighter bombers, which pelt the enemy capital ship from all angles with torpedoes.
- While the fighter bombers have been delayed the Titan Superweapons of the Caldari and Minmatar are a shining example of this trope
- For a more traditional example, some players are fond of "line torping" which is basically creating an uninterrupted stream of missiles between you and your target. Originally done with torpedoes because they were relatively slow; patches have turned them into fast, short-range weapons but some still attempt this with other long-range missile types.
- Artix Entertainment's game Mechquest has MULTIPLE weapons that can pull off the Macross Missile Massacre. No Roboteching, mostly because the weapons are forward-locked. But launching about twelve missiles for several turns in a row does have its charm.
- Duke Nukem 3D has the aptly-named Devastator weapon. It fires small missiles very fast. In fact, it's so effective that you can easily beat the third boss in the game in a few seconds with it.
- In Galactic Civilizations II, the Missile weapon type turns into this rather fast. Culminating in Black Hole Eruptors.
- Homeworld features the Missile Destroyer, which has 4 missile launchers and has a special feature that allows it fire 32 missiles in about 5 seconds. It could single-handedly wipe out entire fleets of strike craft.
- An even better display of fireworks is from the surprisingly smaller and weaker Missile Corvette. If a player can get a hold of one of these, he essentially has the ability to rain sixty missiles on his enemies.
- In Homeworld 2, many of the Vaygr capital ships are armed with anti-ship missiles as their primary weapon. When a large group of these ships open fire at once, an instant missile massacre ensues. The Hiigaran torpedo frigate has a similar effect.
- Star Wars: Empire at War gives the Rebellion a corvette-sized ship, the Corellian Gunboat. Like other Corvette's, it only takes up 2 population, and its primary weapons are concussion missile launchers. Even without using the no-pop-in-battle mod, massed Gunboats can easily overwhelm and destroy an IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER with few (if any) losses. As well, there are also the Anti-fighter/space station Marauder-class Cruiser and Broadside-class Cruiser, who's special ability is to saturate an area with missiles for a (short but sweet) period of time.
- War Machine's War Destroyer super move in the Capcom Vs Whatever games is a barrage of missiles (the main difference between him and Iron Man is that the former's weapons are mostly ballistic while the latter's are energy-based).
- Maxima in The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match plays this trope nice and straight with his newly altered MAX2/HSDM, wherein he blasts the opponent senseless with a barrage of missiles from his own body (He's a cyborg). You would think that would be enough to put the opponent away permanently, but oh no, Maxima wants to be sure of his opponent's demise and proceeds to fry them with a fricking huge laser beam from his own chest cavity.
- Jehuty, the Humongous Mecha piloted by the protagonist in both Zone Of The Enders games, has a "Homing Laser", which targets as many as 40 on-screen targets (IIRC?) and launches beams Macross Missile Massacre style. It is more of a mix of MMM and Beam Spam, and it offers some serious eyecandy too boot.
- In Sword Of The Stars, missiles are one of the three weapons you are guaranteed to get at the start. They can be placed in medium or large turret mounts, and most combat-oriented cruiser or dreadnought designs can hold at least four. Add in the fact that point-defense weapons are murder on missiles, and the 3M is about the only way to use missiles in this game.
- The Finishing Move of Craft in Mega Man Zero 4, the second time Zero fights him.
- Descent 3 follows this closely with its Cyclone missiles. Shortly after being launched, a Cyclone separates into five smaller missiles, which lazily swoop and spiral out toward the target. You can easily get several of these things in the air at once, leading to a rain of warheads down range.
- Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter has this as one of Nym's later attacks.
- Most types of missile in Gratuitous Space Battles carry onboard decoys which surround each missile in graceful curves. A ship (or better - a fleet of ships) with many missile launchers often exemplifies this trope.
- Machines has the gorilla, which fires lots of small missles at long distance, which kind of compensates for it's slow speed and it's other attack being very short range.
- The undeservedly little-known flight-based FPS Flying Heroes has two Macross Missle Massacre weapons: the Magion clan gets the Freezer, which releases a swarm of icy magic orbs, while the Lizard Riders get the Bombardion, which fires a single large rocket that releases a swarm of smaller Roboteching missiles on impact.
- One of the modifications available to sufficiently researched missile tech in the Master Of Orion series is MIRV warheads. Given enough tech advancement, one can make for unholy amounts of missile spam. Early in the first game, MIRV versions are a seperate tech, and are arguably a better investment than the relatively weak guns available at lower tech levels.
- The Dark Magician class in the free-to-play MMORPG Rappelz gets a spell called "Darkness Arrow" that is more accurately described as a Macross Missile Massacre of shadow-element magic.
- Champions Online: The Power Armor Framework includes "Micromunitions". Several salvos of missles are fired from the shoulders: Both, left, then right. It's a ranged Area Attack ability.
- Shadow Hearts: From The New World gives us Ricardo's "Fated Day's End". He plays a few notes, throws his hat, swings his guitar onto his shoulder and releases about twenty missiles, which rain down on the enemy.
- The Twisted Metal series has many weapons like this, including the MIRV, Rain Missile 2, Satellite, Reticle, Zoomy, etc.
Western Animation
- Parodied in Megas XLR episode "TV Dinner", where Coop pushes three buttons on his control panel that are labelled "Missiles", "More Missiles" and "All The Missiles." The missile swarm turns out to be ineffective, as the Monster Of The Week it was used against was the size of a small planet.
- Any number of Transformers can do this, though Demolishor's rebuilt form in Energon is the one that comes to mind first.
- When the Powerpuff Girls once were forced to use a mecha they did one of these making it appear the entire machine was just a giant missile rack. However they appear to lack Roboteching and end up hitting everything except their target (a giant puffer fish about 300 yards away).
- Used in an episode of ReBoot. Matrix's flying motorcycle surprisingly produced several rows of missile racks behind it to launch one of these at the enemy, and does a pretty good job with it.
- In SWAT Kats, the Turbokat performs this attack twice. The first time with buzzsaw missiles while under the control of Hard Drive in "Night of Dark Kat", the second time in "When Strikes Mutilor", to destroy the fighter Mutilor was intending to use to destroy the drive and crash the mothership into the planet's surface.
- Deliberately homaged in Justice League Unlimited, with one hero in a Powered Armor using this against the near-unstoppable android Amazo.
- It didn't work. Didn't even slow him down.
- In Star Wars Clone Wars, a Macross Missile Massacre was fired at the Republic starfighters by the droid starfighters. Anaking Skywalker got them all following him, then used the Misguided Missile technique and flew straight through the nearest enemy capital ship's starfighter launch bay, For Massive Damage. He still had a swarm of missiles after him, though, so he got his fighter squadrons to line up a shot at where he was going to be and fire off another Macross Missile Massacre. The two Massacres collided in midair (-space?) and wiped each other out.
- On a much smaller scale, we have Earthbound. Rocket-type weapons have a distinct sound effect for when they're fired. Bottle Rockets do it once, Big Bottle rockets do it several times (presumably for igniting a bigger engine). When Jeff uses a Multi-Bottle Rocket, it layers enough repititions of this "engine igntion" sound that the attack sounds more like a machine gun going off than a rocket. One can only imagine what this attack would look like if it were animated. It's as powerful as it sounds, too.
Real Life
- The concept of Multiple Launch Rocket System / Free Rocket Over Ground: see a concentration of enemy troops, quickly unload a lot of cheap unguided rockets to scour the whole area.
- The historical Korean hwacha — which can be best described as a Schizo Tech Katyusha — also functioned in much the same way, a 15-16th century saturation artillery piece capable of firing up to 100 steel-tipped rockets or 200 singijeon (effectively fire arrows). Therefore although there are hints of a Chinese version, it's likely that this trope was invented in Korea.
- Soviet volley missile launchers, starting from BM-13-16 and BM-8-48 (132mm / 82mm, second is the number of rails) Katyusha yt wp, also known as "Stalin's Organ" due to their distinctive sound, with variant launchers (like aircraft-mounted one◊) and ammo (e.g. spreading several thermite elements for even more Impressive Pyrotechnics). Its descendants the 9K51 Grad yt wp and the BM-30 Smerch yt wp — the first can fire 720 missiles at once when packed in a batallion of 18 launchers, while the second can fire a missile every 3 seconds or so. Of course, during Cold War many USSR allies got these as well.
- The American closest equivalent is the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System. Each MLRS vehicle can launch 12 277mm rockets within sixty seconds. Each rocket can contain up to 644 submunitions. Total throw is therefore 7,728 bombs launched in under a minute per vehicle. MLRS batteries are colloquially known as 'grid square erasers.'
- The MLRS ain't called "Steel Rain" for nothing. It can also shoot guided missiles for extra precision.
- Steel Rain! Some stay dry and others feel the pain!
- The Katyusha is impressive, but it's outdone by the American T34 Calliope, basically a Sherman tank with sixty rocket tubes strapped onto it. Developed a year after the 48-tube Katyusha variant, one wonders if the designers were thinking "those Russians are onto something, but it needs More Dakka."
- The MMM was very much a planned tactic of Soviet Maritime Aviation in a World War Three scenario using a lot of Tu-16 and Tu-22M bombers along with missile subs like the "Echo". Since the Tu-16's reporting name is "Badger" and it carried Mnogo Nukes, the joke is obvious.... Sergey Gorshkov, commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy from 1968 to 1985 called this "the battle of the first salvo".
- At the current state of the art, the US Navy's 'Aegis' missile defense technology is essentially undefeatable except by a wave (or waves) of inbound threats larger than what the system is capable of handling (which it does by launching counter-missiles rapidly enough to simultaneously engage them all).
- The Navy antimissile people seem aware of this, as they have introduced point-defense Phalanx 20mm Gatling guns to the Aegis antimissile defenses. Designed to be able to take out a low-flying antiship missile before it hits the ship, this system can be overwhelmed as well (there's only a few guns per ship) - it's strictly a last resort weapon.
- Which is why the Phalanx has been replaced by the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe (anti-missile) Missile. They are fitted in 21-cell launchers with full 360o rotation and 90o elevation. Unlike gun-based close in weapons systems the missile system can engage many target simultaneously via a Macross Missile Massacre style launch. Of course at $500,000 per missile such a Massacre is going to cost upwards of $10 million dollars.
- They're also in the very early stages of working on a version of this system that, instead of a rapid-fire autocannon, uses a laser beam: the Tactical High-Energy Laser. This would provide greater accuracy, and possibly be harder to swamp. In ten or twenty years, we may have a Truth In Television example of Beam Spam. A more compact mobile version, the M-THEL is also in development for the ground forces, designed to shoot down mortar and howitzer shells as well as missiles. The THEL prototype has already successfully been demonstrated in defense against mortar rounds.
- It is unclear whether the Russian Orlan/"Kirov" class can do the same. The nuclear-powered cruiser has a greater SAM capacity than most other vessels on the planet, with four different types carried.
- It can. Its main SAM battery consists basically of navalized version of the venerable S-300 system, with eight vertical revolver-type launchers, each holding eight missiles. This gives us 64 large long-range missiles, but each cell in those launcher could accept from four to eight smaller, shorter range missiles, driving the number up to 512 missiles. These could be fired in salvoes limited only by the fire control ability, which is, admittedly, somewhat lacking, but given that Aegis-analogue is already coming online *
The Sigma system, installed on the new Russian frigates and corvettes, is just a somewhat scaled-down version of it. and it would be installed on them during a scheduled refit — all bets are off.
- The U.S Navy also uses a Macross Missile Massacre as the main offensive weapon for its cruisers and destroyers: the Vertical Launching System (VLS). This badass launcher can pump out Tomahawks or SAMs at a ridiculous rate (about one every two seconds) to attack ground targets, aircraft, or even space targets like satellites and ballistic missiles. The VLS-SM3 combo has been demonstrated as easily capable of killing an orbiting satellite.
- New Russian UKSK VLS is built around the same idea, but, as it uses a cold-launch approach, it's much cheaper and lighter on a per cell basis, so even a 2000-ton corvette is able to carry a couple of 8-cell modules.
- However, the plan for future ships like the Zumwalt-Class stealth destroyer see the VLS-Tomahawk land-attack combo being replaced by the 155mm howitzer-based Advanced Gun System, and later, by electromagnetic railguns. BFGs are more cost-effective than MMMs.
- There's also the Ohio-class SSGN submarine, which can carry up to 154 cruise missiles in it's VLS tubes.
- A very large number of real-life weapon systems or tactics can be considered real-life versions of this, from multiple rocket launchers which can fire a large number of either "dumb" or "smart" munitions, to simply clustering a bunch of weapon launchers together or coordinating a large number of missile launches (works doubly best when paired with previous described weapon) or large bombers like the B-52 whose primary mission is to saturate a target area with missiles (back in the Cold War days, nuclear-tipped missiles. It's no exaggeration to say that a single B-52 with a full load of cruise missiles could effectively annihilate the Soviet Union by itself barring countermeasures or interception, and an equivalent Soviet bomber, the Tu-95 "Bear" for example, would likewise be capable of doing the same to the United States), let alone ballistic-missile launching submarines like the Soviet "Typhoon"-class (if you've ever seen The Hunt For Red October this is the real-life submarine the titular vessel is based on) which can carry 20 missiles with ten warheads each, or an American Ohio-class submarine converted to launch 156 land attack cruise missiles, also cluster-munition capable. A reason why the Macross Missile Massacre is such a popular trope, after all, is because it happens to be a very useful and devastating real-life tactic, especially when target destruction must be guaranteed, probability of missile evasion or interception is high, and when collateral damage isn't given an afterthought or when the missiles have sufficiently "smart" enough guidance to prevent such.
- When engaged in air-to-air combat, opposing aircraft will "ripple-fire" missiles at each other to increase the probability of a kill. This especially occurred in The Vietnam War, early missiles being unreliable, frequently missing when they worked at all. In effect, the Macross Missile Massacre is really just an exaggerated, Rule Of Cool-conforming version of this real life tactic.
- It might be accurate to say that militaries were forced to use this tactic before the invention of guided weapons. Without the ability to target a single location, the only way to hit the enemy most of the time was to blanket the area they're in with shells, rockets, or bombs. Although an artillery barrage isn't as visually spectacular as a true 3M due to the lack of flames or smoke trails, it was just as effective. Also, the image of a massive bomber emptying her bays over a target has become a symbol of air raids since WW2, despite the fact that stand-off weaponry is increasingly now becoming the norm.
- Officially, Gary Power's U-2 and accidentally a pursuing MiG-19 (piloted by Sergei Safronov) were shot down with a salvo of fourteen S-75 Dvina/SA-2 "Guideline" missiles. Other versions of the event are:
- A Su-9 caught the U-2 in her slipstream, breaking off the wings. The missiles hit the aforementioned MiG-19.
- A first three-missile salvo destroyed the U-2. Other batteries were unsure about the success and thirteen more missiles were fired, hitting the MiG-19.
- The term MIRV stands for "Multiple independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle" and is used to describe short-range to ICBM class nuclear-tipped missiles that contain a single first stage with multiple warheads that will detach after launch, shortly before impact. (Reportedly the Trident II is capable of carrying at least 12 warheads per missile.) The contrails in Missile Command that would split up to hit multiple targets? This is the real life weapon on which they were based.
- The British Starstreak Close Air Defense Missile is designed to kill low flying aircraft by launching three smaller guided sub-munitions that then home into its target mid flight. Think about it, it's a missile that launches a small Macross Missile Massacre, in real life!
- Third World nations often try to counter their enemy's expensive tanks and attack helicopters using lots of guys with cheap shoulder-fired rocket launchers like the RPG-7. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
- Used somewhat effectively by the forces of Somali warlord Aidid in the Real Life Battle of Mogadishu (upon which Black Hawk Down is based). While the movie showed a mere handful of rockets, in real life over two-hundred RPG projectiles were fired, with the end result of downing two black hawk helicopters.
- Though not exactly missiles, multiple-launched aerial rockets were the primary armament of US Air Force interceptors in the 1950's. See article on other Wiki and this vid.
- The German R 4 M rocket was intended as a way to destroy a B-17/B-24-sized target in one salvo. One 55-millimeter rocket may not have been much, but shotgun 24 of them at once and you've got something going.
- This trope is not quite as unrealistic as one might think since actual guided missiles often follow slightly eratic paths until they get up to speed and any course to intercept a moving target has to be curved by definition. Naturally the flight paths of real-world missiles aren't nearly as exagerated.
- Historically, it's taken an average of 20 surface-to-air missiles to bring down one aircraft.
|
|
