STORM FROM THE SHADOWS — snippet 46:
"Essentially, Admiral Gold Peak," he began, "Apollo is a new step in missile command and control. It's a logical extension of other things we've already been doing, which marries the existing Ghost Rider technology with the Keyhole platforms and the MDM by using the newest generation of grav-pulse transceivers. What it does is to establish near-real-time control linkages for MDMs at extended ranges. At three light-minutes, the command and control transmission delay for Apollo is only three seconds, one-way, and it's turned out that we've been able to provide significantly more bandwidth than we'd projected as little as seven months ago. In fact, we have enough that we can actually reprogram electronic warfare birds and input new attack profiles on the fly. In effect, we have a reactive EW and target selection capability, managed by the full capability of a ship of the wall's computational capacity, with a shorter control loop than the shipboard systems trying to defeat it."
Despite herself, Michelle's eyebrows rose. Unlike Bill Edwards, she was a trained and experienced tactical officer, and the possibilities Halstead seemed to be suggesting . . . .
"Our initial projections were based on trying to install the new transceivers in each MDM," Halstead continued. "Originally, we saw no other option, and doing things that way would have made each MDM an individual unit, independent of any other missile, which seemed to offer us the most tactical flexibility and would have meant we could fire them from standard MDM launchers and the Mark 15 and Mark 17 pods. Unfortunately, putting independent links in each bird would have required us to remove one entire drive stage because of volume constraints. That would still have been worthwhile, given the increased accuracy and penetration ability we anticipated, but the development team's feeling was that we would be giving away too much range performance."
"That was one of Bill's suggestions, Admiral," Hemphill said quietly.
"Once we'd taken up ways to deal with that particular objection," Halstead went on, "it became evident that our only choices were to either strip the drive stage out of the birds, as we'd originally planned, or else to add a dedicated missile. One whose sole function would be to provide the FTL link between the firing ship and the attack birds. There were some potential drawbacks to that, but it allowed us not only to retain the full range of the MDM, but actually required very few modifications to the existing Mark 23. And, somewhat to the surprise of several members of our team, using a dedicated control missile actually increased tactical flexibility enormously. It let us put in a significantly more capable — and longer-ranged — transciever, and we were also able to fit in a much more capable data processing and AI node. The Mark 23s are slaved to the control bird — the real 'Apollo' missile — using their standard light-speed systems, reconfigured for maximum bandwidth rather than maximum sensitivity, and the Apollo's internal AI manages its slaved attack birds while simultaneously collecting and analyzing the data from all of their onboard sensors. It transmits the consolidated output from all of its slaved missiles to the firing vessel, which gives the ship's tactical department a real-time, close-up and personal view of the tactical environment.
"It works the same way on the command side, as well. The firing vessel tells the Apollo what to do, based on the sensor data coming in from it, and the onboard AI decides how to tell its Mark 23s how to do it. That's the real reason our effective bandwidth's gone up so significantly; we're not trying to individually micromanage hundreds or even thousands of missiles. Instead, we're relying on a dispersed network of control nodes, each of which is far more capable of thinking for itself than any previous missile has been. In fact, if we lose the FTL link for any reason, the Apollo drops into autonomous mode, based on the prelaunch attack profiles loaded to it and the most recent commands it's received. It's actually capable of generating entirely new targeting and penetration commands on its own. They're not going to be as good as the ones a waller's tac department could generate for it if the link were still up, but we're estimating something like a forty-two percent increase in terminal performance at extreme range as compared to any previous missile or, for that matter, our own Mark 23s with purely sub-light telemetry links, even if the Apollo bird is operating entirely on its own."
Michelle nodded, her eyes intent, and Halstead touched a button on his command chair's arm. A side-by-side schematic of two large — and one very- large — missiles appeared above the conference table, between Michelle and the simulator command deck, and he indicated one of them with a flashing cursor.
"The Apollo itself is an almost entirely new design, but, as you can see, the only modifications the Mark 23 required were relatively minor and could be easily incorporated without any break in production schedules."
The cursor moved to the very largest missile.
"This is the system-defense variant, the Mark 23-D, for the moment, although it's probably going to end up redesignated the Mark 25. It's basically an elongated Mark 23 to accommodate both a fourth impeller drive and longer lasing rods with more powerful grav focusing to push the directed yield still higher. Aside from the grav units and laser rods, this is all off-the-shelf hardware, so production shouldn't be a problem, although at the moment the ship-launched system has priority."
"With the Apollo missile itself — we've officially designated the ship-launched version the Mark 23-E, partly in an attempt to convince anyone who hears about it that it's only an attack bird upgrade–" the cursor moved to the third missile "– the situation's a bit more complicated. As I say, it's an entirely new design, and we're looking at some bottlenecks in getting it into volume production. The system-defense variant –the Mark 23-F — is another all-new design. Aside from the drives and the fusion bottle, we had to start with a blank piece of paper in each case, and we hit some snags getting the new transciever squared away. We're on top of those, now, but we're still only beginning to ramp up production. The 23-F is lagging behind the 23-E, mostly because we've tweaked the transciever's sensitivity even higher in light of the longer anticipated engagement ranges, which increased volume requirements more dramatically than we'd expected, but even the Echo model is coming off the lines more slowly than we'd like. When you factor in the need for the original Keyhole control platforms to be refitted to the Keyhole-Two standard, this isn't something we're going to be able to put into fleet-wide deployment overnight. On the other hand –"
If it’s system defense… shouldn’t it have the Apollo system inside the missile along with the four drives?
“Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
RA Heinlein
J
Why should they?
Think about it. The system defense missiles are heavier, longer, with an additional stage. So what? They are still off the shelf.
They have propably additional reaction mass storage to feed the fourth stage. They have short-range-optimized telemetric links instead of long range ones. And they have a slightly different hull reflecting this changes.
Or in other words, they can tweak the existing conveyor belts for the standard Mark 23 to build the D-variant on no time.
They can turn out hundrets of them per month. They cost only insubstantially more than an standard Mark 23.
If they had integrated the ftl-controll into the Mark 23-D… well they would have had to build them almost from the scratch.
They would have been 3-4 times the size of the actually build Mark 23-D, to integrate the ftl-transceiver. There would have been no building lines even remotely able to build them, so they would have build new fabriks from the scratch for them. Every single missile would cost propably 2 or 3 times as much. It would take 2 or 3 times to build each single one. And that is without considering the pods, wich would have to be much bigger, and much more expensive.
And all that without any single tactical or strategical advantage.
With the controll-missile-approach you have the full advantage of Apollo, the ftl-fire-controll. You need to controll only 1 missile for every x (8 in the SD(P)-version, but we don’t know if the distribution is the same in the system defense version) and since the BoMA we know that controll-links are very important.
Each cluster acts much more intelligent even without the ftl-link.
You still have to set up new production runs for the Apollo-missile. But you only need 1 Apollo for every x attack birds. So you can build attack birds en masse and life with the bottlenecks of the apollo-production.
You need to buy only one ftl-transceiver per x attack missiles.
Maybe they would have integrated the ftl-transceiver into the system defense attack missiles, if they had started with them. But as I understand it, they started with the podnaught-version. So when they began designing the system defense version they had the allready working podnaught-version and more or less simply scaled it up a bit.
@ MadMcAl
Almost agree with your analysis: the disagreement is that the sub-controller design is actually tactically better – it needs less central control because it offloads more computing to the Apollo. Also, it assumes that all 8 (or however many) missiles are going to stay together until the final approach, which also reduces the central computing load.
The real difficulty here is that I’m not seeing the central controller(s) for the system defense yet. With the fleet version you’ve got an SD(P) as a controller. With this you’ve got, what?
Presumably it’s distributed as well, somewhat similarly to Haven’s Moiarty platforms.
Even with that I don’t see a humongous advantage to having a four stage missile when the assembly lines are set up to crank out three stage missiles in quantity. In fact, if they’re intelligent the control platforms are going to be set up to handle both.
The tactical doctrine has almost got to be to wait for the attacker to get inside the hyperspace limit, where they’ll be sitting ducks. A four stage missile simply gives the attacker more time to duck back into hyper if they’re outside the limit.
John Roth
That the control-missile is tactically better is only one of the arguments I gave, and I still think it is viable.
Regardless how you construct it, fire-control costs mass, volume and computing power. Sure, you have the ability to control maybe 5 million missiles with an extensive control network the mass of one single SD(P)-squadron. But this network has to be build. It has to be paid for.
Even if you use such an big sized network, with the control-missile you have not 5 million birds but 40 million.
And, if you think about it, you can see that even without this multiplication the control-missile is tactically better off.
Without it, each missile would have to rely on its own sensors and computers, and of course the directions of the mother-ship.
With it, each missile has the sensors of at least 8 other missiles at beck and call. It has the much more powerfull computers of the control-missile. Even with Apollo the delay of information from the mothership is arround 2 seconds per lightminute on transfer-time alone. That means at 3 light-minutes the decisions of the mothership is based on at least 6 seconds old data.
The enhanced computing power of the Apollo makes the usage of this decisions much more efficient. Something that will be automaticly lacking in the transceiving attack missile.
As about the control-node, IIRC in AAC it was mentioned that the new fortresses at Manticore B had been build with KH from the beginning. So the answer is clear.
The fourth stage, well, of course I don’t know the full range of an stage used in an Mk. 23. But I do know that for 3 stages it is less than 4 light-minutes (in AAC Honor used them at a Range of 75 million km, a bit over 4 light-minutes).
With an hyperlimit between 18 and 28 lightminutes out from the primary for the most propably life bearing star classes F and G and considering that the liquid water zone is as a rule way inside this hyper limit (Mars is 12.66 light minutes out and is considered at best the very edge of the liquid water zone), making the normal range from the inhabitated world to the hl at a rule 5 light minutes or mostly above, enlarging the powered envelope of the missiles from say… 3 light-minutes to 4 light-minutes while the attacker is stuck with the 3 lm’s seems a good idea for me. At a rule the enemy is still arround 2 lm inside the hl, and has just accellerated for a hour or so onto the planet. No way they can reach the hl and duck out in time. And the additional lm gives the defender an big advantage. The attacker either can fire his missiles ballistic, with the known results, or he can wait out the missile storm before he launches.
OT: dung fungi can accelerate their spores at 180,000G. Higher acceleration than a Manty missile! And without impeller drive, no less.
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/10/fungus-opera.html
@MadMcAl
I presume the first part of your remarks are directed at the other poster, since I agreed with you that including a single control node (the Apollo configuration) rather than a control node in each missile was better.
The issue with an Apollo cluster isn’t range, it’s control and time on target. The missiles aren’t going to suddenly magically disintegrate when they reach 4 light minutes, or ten light minutes, or whatever. Central control range from the control platform is extended by a factor of 64, which is good. However, extended range can be whatever the admiral desires, with the understanding that the Apollo node doesn’t have the smarts of a superdreadnaught’s computer and tac staff.
Time on target is really the issue. Adding an additional stage does nothing for the control range; that’s set by the propagation of grav pulses, which is 64 times light speed. Four stages will either boost the missile to higher speeds if three are used initially, or will allow two major course corrections.
Consider system geometry. If the effective controllable range is 4 light-minutes, and the diameter of the sphere set by the hyper limit is 36 to 56 light-minutes, that’s a lot of surface to cover! It’s still a lot even if you’re only covering approaches on the ecliptic. That’s a minimum circumference of 120 lm, giving at least 30 control zones, each of which needs a control platform.
Something about this situation does not compute. I suspect we’ll learn more in the next snippet. Maybe.
Possibly I don’t understand Keyhole. If I remember correctly, it’s a means of allowing a sensor platform to be tractored to a ship while the ship has its sidewalls up. There are enough instances of ships getting data from sensor platforms via grav pulse while the sidewalls are up without Keyhole so that I seriously doubt if it’s needed for forts.
John Roth
@John Roth
Well, in this case I have to say that your agreement was good stealthed. Or in other words, I understood it as an disagreement. Maybe it was the “Almost” that threw me off ;).
About the stage, well, in AAC the time coasting reduced the accuracy of the missiles. Not enough for such an extend of overkill and the second time Apollo was used in battle to be really important. But we can asume that somebody will develope some counter for Apollo. It won’t negate it totally but it will degrade its accuracy. So you need every single little bit where you can bolster said accuracy. Of course you could fire Apollo onto targets 10 light minutes out with only 20 seconds round signal time (if Apollo ever reaches such ranges), if they go coasting in the middle.
But if the missiles have a powered envelope of say 2.5 lm’s and coast the remaining 7.5 lm’s the enemy will propably not be where the control nexus guessed they will be.
About your sphere… well you are right. And wrong. You normally don’t really care if the enemy sits on the other side of the system doing nothing. Sure eventually you have to move some mobile units to him and drive him off. But if he is way out of the range of the important things in the system, like, only for example, inhabitated planets he is no danger. And if he comes close to said important things for something unfriendly like destroying the orbital infrastructur or visiting with several tenth of thousands of marines without getting his visa stamped, well then he will enter the 4 lm sphere of direct control.
Without an fixed entry-point into an system (like the warp-points in stars at war) you loose nothing by conceding parts of the outer system to the enemy.
Sorry, I missed your question about Keyhole.
Keyhole is an revolutionary new firecontrol-design. It doesn’t only see aside of the impeller (and not ftl but it replaces the respective sensor-suites for short-range fire-control of the mothership), KH I controls the anti-missiles as well, without the wedges of them interferring.
And as the fortresses have actually an impeller, complete with the impenetrable wedge, they will of course profit from the KH I.
KH II of course is a completely different matter. KH II is designed to work like a KH I, but with the additional ftl-longrange-firecontrol-links for Apollo.
The reason they most propably won’t refit the older SD(P)’s for Apollo is that for KH (anyone) to work they have to completely replace the fire-control-systems of the ship. KH-systems are simply not compatible with older systems.
Aren’t the keyhole systems enormously vulnerable to attack? Shouldn’t they usually get blown away in the first salvo, since they are hanging out there outside of all the protection for the ship?
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_keyhole_platform_survivability.htm
#9, of course, post-Battle of Manticore, the only ones in the Alliance with a non-trivial number of KH1 wallers are the Graysons; Manticore’s were almost all destroyed, and the Andermani never had any (the early-build Adlers didn’t have anything like Keyhole at all; the late-build ones had Keyhole 2).