STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 50:
The range-to-target sidebar on the tactical display was preposterous.
The missile salvo was sixty-eight million kilometers from Achilles, speeding steadily onward at 150,029 KPS. Its birds had been ballistic for four and a half minutes, ever since the second drive system had burned out, and they were still ninety-three seconds — almost fourteen million kilometers — from their target, even at half the speed of light.
And the attack missiles still hadn't been assigned targets.
Michelle Henke sat quietly to one side, playing the umpire's role as she watched Dominica Adenauer, Wilton Diego, and Victoria Armstrong work the simulation. It felt just plain wrong to have attack birds that far out at all, she reflected, far less have them swanning around without targets already locked into their cybernetic brains. And yet, what was happening was only a logical consequence of the new technology.
Admiral Hemphill, she'd decided, had been absolutely right about Bill Edwards. The "communications officer's" intimate knowledge of the entire Apollo project had proved invaluable when she and her staff started kicking around the new system's potentialities. In fact, Adenauer and he had spent hours off to one side, talking animatedly, scribbling on napkins (or any other unwary surface which made itself available), and tweaking the simulation software. Michelle had been relieved to see that. Some tactical specialists would undoubtedly have rebuffed a mere communications type's suggestions, wherever he might have spent her last tour. Adenauer, on the other hand, was sufficiently self-confident to welcome insight, regardless of its source, and over the last six days of ship's time, she and Edwards had established not simply a sound working relationship, but a warm friendship. And the fruits of their efforts were readily apparent. In fact, Michelle suspected that the two of them had come up with at least a few wrinkles which hadn't occurred to anyone at BuWeaps.
"Coming up on Point Alpha," Diego said quietly.
"Acknowledged," Adenauer replied.
The actual firing and management of the missiles was Diego's responsibility as Achilles's tactical officer, but the management and distribution of the squadron's massed firepower was a function of its operations officer. Normally, Adenauer would have given Diego Michelle's attack criteria and established general attack profiles before the first missile was launched. Diego would have taken things from there, assigning individual missiles to specific targets and — with Lieutenant Isaiah Maslov, Achilles' electronics warfare officer — slotting them into the attack, EW, and penetration profiles Adenaur had laid down.
But today, they were examining a completely different capability. A capability no squadron commander in history had ever before enjoyed. For the purposes of today's simulation, HMS Achilles had been promoted from a battlecruiser to an Invictus-class SD(P). Every unit of the squadron had undergone a similar transformation, which meant that instead of the sixty Mark 16s each ship could normally fire in a single double-broadside salvo, each of them could deploy six full pods of Mark 23s. Normally, that would have meant that each ship rolled one pattern of Mark 17 "flat pack" missile pods, each of which contained ten Mark 23s, every twelve seconds. In this case, however, they were rolling the Mark 17, Mod D, which contained only eight Mark 23s . . . and a single Mark 23-E.
So instead of sixty Mark 16s every eighteen seconds, with a maximum powered attack range (without a ballistic segment, at least) of only a shade over twenty-seven million kilometers and "cruiser range" laser heads, they were firing forty-eight attack and dedicated EW Mark 23s every twelve seconds.
That was a sufficiently heady increase in firepower, Michelle thought dryly, but the technique which she and Adenauer — and Edwards — had come up with for today made it even sweeter.
One of the Manticoran Alliance's most telling advantages was Ghost Rider, the highly developed — and constantly evolving — family of FTL recon and EW platforms. Deployed in a shell around a single ship, squadron, or task force, they gave an Alliance CO a degree of situational awareness no one else could match. Alliance starships could simply see farther, faster, and better than anyone else, and their recon platforms could deliver their take in real-time or near real-time, which no one else — not even the Republic of Haven — could do.
But there were still drawbacks. It was still entirely possible to detect the impeller signatures of a potentially hostile force and not have a recon platform in position to run and find out who the newcomers were. Even if a tactical officer had very good reason to believe the newcomers in question cherished ill intentions, she still had to get one of her platforms into position to look them over from relatively close range before she could be positive of that. Or, for that matter, before she could be positive that what she was seeing were really starships and not electronic warfare drones pretending to be starships. And it was generally considered to be a good idea to have that sort of information in hand before one sent an entire salvo of attack missiles screaming in on what might, after all, turn out to be a neutral merchant convoy.
In one of Adenauer's and Edwards' brainstorming sessions with Michelle, however, Edwards had pointed out a new possibility which Apollo made possible. Fast as the Ghost Rider platforms were, they were immensely slower than an MDM. They had to be, since stealth and long endurance were completely incompatible with the massive acceleration rates produced by an attack missile's impeller wedge in its brief, incredibly un-stealthy lifetime. But Apollo was designed to combine and analyze the readings from the attack missiles slaved to it . . . and to transmit that analysis back to the launching ship at FTL speed. Michelle and Adenauer had grasped his point immediately and run with it, and this simulation was designed to test what they'd come up with. What Adenauer had done was to fire a single Apollo pod thirty seconds before they fired a complete squadron salvo. And that pod was now one minute's flight from the "unknown impeller wedges" eighty-two million kilometers from Achilles.
"Jettisoning the shrouds now," Diego reported as the first pod's missiles reached Point Alpha.
"Acknowledged," Adenauer replied.
The shroud-jettisoning maneuver had been programmed into the missiles before launch. Unlike any previous attack missile, the Mark 23s in an Apollo pod were fitted with protective shrouds intended to shield their sensors from the particle erosion of extended ballistic flight profiles at relativistic speeds. Most missiles didn't really need anything of the sort, since their impeller wedges incorporated particle screening. They were capable of maintaining a separate particle screen — briefly, at least — as long as they retained onboard power, even after the wedge went down, but that screening was far less efficient than a starship's particle screens. For the most part, that hadn't mattered, since any ballistic component of a "standard" attack profile was going to be brief, at best. But with Apollo, very long-range attacks, with lengthy ballistic components built into them, had suddenly become feasible. That capability, however, would be of limited usefulness if particle erosion had blinded the missiles before they ever got a chance to see their targets.
Now the jettisoning command blew the shrouds, and the sensors they had protected came on-line. Of course, the missiles were 72,998,260 kilometers from Achilles. That was over four light-minutes, which in the old days (like five or six T-years ago) would have meant any transmission from them would take four minutes to reach Achilles.
With the FTL grav-pulse transceiver built into the Mark 23-E, however, it took barely four seconds.
The sollies are going to lose a lots of ships before they equal the manties tech
That depends on what they send and when.
In a 1:1 against an Old-Style-SD with Single-Drive-Missiles – and with the new evolution of the Mark 16s – even a vessel as small as a Roland-Destroyer could damage his opponent badly. No one in his or her right mind would expect to kill the SD with a destroyer (but would it not be a shocking experience for the sollies? ;))- but as long as she remains outside the missile envelope, the SD could only take without any chance of give back.
A Saganami-C and a Nike, using only the internal weapons – could kill one (SAG-C) or two (Nike) old-style-SD’s; but they have to shot dry itself
I’d bet some weird Sollie weapons lab has something that can counter or give some other kind of edge somewhere… afterall, they have commerce wedge killers, assassination missiles, etc, not something likely to be deployed by regular navy, so there is likely to be unpleasant surprises of all sorts lying around a polity as big as the league, with so many uber-capitalist pig-dog warmongering labs around :)
Hmm… I wonder how much space and power you could free up if you removed the hyperdrive systems and beta nodes… Manticore Home Fleet could deploy some special units that had them stripped out… and have way more capability. (and probably San Martin, and Spindle as well) If you absolutely have to protect something, and need more mobility than forts, there should be some of these kinds of ships.
What you get when you strip the hyperdrive out is a fort. A fort has all the mobility that it needs (that to dodge ballistic missile strikes). There is no reason for a fort to be any more mobile than it already is. Forts are placed where you absolutely cannot let the enemy get past; it is not a matter of intercepting the enemy before it can attack secondary asteroid process facility B, or chasing the routed enemy across the hyper limit, for example. The forts are placed at the primary point of the system. To move them in response of the enemy’s actions is just to expose that point to attack. With a fort, if you place it in orbit of the Primary, and it drives the enemy away, that is all you want. You don’t need to destroy the enemy to protect the system, only drive them away. When protecting a system, a draw counts as a win.
What you loose with forts, is the mobility and flexibility that ships provide. For example, Haven effectively ignored the junction forts during the BOM, by attacking Sphinx directly. All the firepower that the forts represent was removed from the battle by the simple expedient of avoiding it.
One could argue that, due to the nature of the system geography, with 3 habitable planets around 2 stars, plus the junction, the forts were actually a waste of resources and Manticore would be better served with a larger home fleet that through mobility, has increased flexibility.
I question why Manticore even built the junction forts. Even if an enemy controlled Trevor’s star, for example, all the could do would be to jump in a limited number of ships into the system, a number of ships far smaller than actually used in the BOM. This raiding force could destroy the civilian infrastructure at the junction, but this infrastructure just supports the junction; it is not the junction. That is, its loss would have a huge economic impact, and have to be rebuilt, but its loss would not be a war-ending event.
That’s not to say that other systems should not build forts, and in fact the merchant CLAC’s discussed earlier would be deployed essentially like forts, with the ability to be deployed to a system other than the system where they were built, just that forts are a specialized unit and its advantages/disadvantages must be considered prior to deployment.
A ship going through a junction appears to have to do things to bring up its wedge, doesn’t it? At that moment, it appears to be vulnerable to unpleasant events. Or am I missing something?
A ship going through a junction appears to have to do things to bring up its wedge, doesn’t it? At that moment, it appears to be vulnerable to unpleasant events. Or am I missing something?
Comment by George Phillies — October 13, 2008 @ 6:52 am
Yes, you do. Reconfiguring sails to wedge isn’t really time-comsuming; else White-Haven could’ve not transfer 8th Fleet to Basilisk (Echoes of Honor) in the way he had. The attacker will have the advantage of surprise, and he could fire at the forts instantly after he complete his jump (maybe preprogrammed; that would be possible, if he has good intelligence about the positions of the forts)
Sails to wedge does not have to be time consuming…it just has to take a very modest amount of time and it is possible to fire on the emerging ships. Faster-than-light detectors mean that aiming issues now are a lot simpler. And drives on forts mean they certain are not where they used to be when last you looked.
@Ikan
You are reffering to rejected technology. The wedge-killer does not work on ships aware of it. The stealth-missile is way inferior to Mistletoe.
You should read the infodumps about the SLN. The SLN is crippled by multiple factors.
1. It is the one and only navy that really counts. All the rest only play navy (the public opinion of the whole SL, including most of the SLN). It doesn’t need any fancy toys to be the best of the best.
2. The SLN is one of the numerous totally corrupt bureaucracys of the SL. You can asume that somewhat arround 60-80% of the R&D-budget vanishes in the pockets of high officers, politicans and industrialists.
3. The SLN is (while not officially) divided into 2 different parts. The one part that actually does something is the part without heavy weaponry, ships of the wall amnd the mission to crush any real threat to the SL. The other part simply rests on the knowledge that they don’t need to do something, since they are the most experienced, higest technologized and most powerfull navy in existance. They don’t think they are it, they don’t belive they are it, they “know” they are it.
There are outside of the second havenite war maybe 2 or 3 powers that have an idea how the warfare-technology has changed in the last 20 years.
That are the (at the moment very crushed) Technodyne, Mesa and propably Beowulf.
We can expect Mesan SD(P)’s with MDM’s in the not so far future I would think. Not so sophisticated as Manticorean, but at least as powerfull as Havenite ships.
Technodyne is at the moment in no position to do anything.
And Beowulf is the Joker.
#3, I don’t think a single Roland can produce a heavy enough salvo to get through even an old-style SD’s defenses. A flotilla of Rolands would be another matter entirely, though.
Having said that, though, it’s virtually certain that the SLN will lose vast numbers of ships and sailors — quite possibly enough to break it as an effective fighting force — before they have any kind of response to Manticoran tech.
The problem is not the navy themselves but what you do with the planets after you capture them Manticore has no army to speek of. It has all been a naval war for the last 20-50 years.
The problem is not the navy themselves but what you do with the planets after you capture them Manticore has no army to speek of. It has all been a naval war for the last 20-50 years.
uhh no they had a huge army of umpteen millions during war 1 against haven but they down size it real quick in peace time
there army is basically marines without the space training they use it as a secondary force that goes in to clean up after the marines
one planet they have solders on is that sister planet of Grayson the one with the nutters on it whats its name?
my guess is that they could get 100 million or so army from there new plantets that they have the planets tech and education is behind but it is not such a big deal for occupation as haven already knows
still 100 million is still quite small if they are up against the sollies my guess is they would be seen as liberating at least on OFS planets and some of the shell. so they could use them (during WW2 france got it’s army up and running by 45 when it was liberated in 44 (not the free french) so as the manties pushed in wards they could pick up quite quickly extra troops
My guess anyway
#11 – I don’t know, how many missiles one Roland can control at the same time – and if there is a possibility to change the accel of the missiles continuous between half and max. If she, for example, fires the first salvo with 50% max accel, the second with 52%, the third with 55% (Numbers are purely accidental) etc – to make sure, that all missiles reach their target at the same time – it could be done.
Karsten, based upon what was posted a few snippets ago, a Roland can control 36 missiles. Assuming it has the off bore firing capability it could control 3 missile launches at a time. A single Roland couldn’t control enough missiles to saturate an SDs defenses to get hits, even if the missiles had enough firepower to damage the SD. On the other hand, in a missile duel it will probably kill anything CA sized or smaller, and probably give most BCs a run for their money. (Non Alliance/Haven ships that is.) If anything gets into energy range though it is dead.
MadMcAl, Somehow I don’t think we have seen the end of Technodyne. Beowulf on the other hand, if Manticore, Haven, Anderman, or Torch figure out how the assassinations and attempts were conducted will definitely be on Manticores and the others side.
Also remember that Mesa/Manpower has “hired” a bunch of exPeep ships, which I am fairly certain that will use as cannon fodder.
I still think that defining the SLN and FS as a cohesive unit is a mistake. At best it is a loose confederation. Just because Manticore may go to war against units of either/both does not mean that the weight of the whole will be brought against the Queen. The bureaucracy of the Solarian League could be best described as glacial. It will move slowly and unsurely faced with the threat of all out war. And there are splits within the League. Beowulf is a decidedly pro-Manticoran system. I would guess that there are others. We could be looking at the roots of the dissolution of the League. Civil War is not out of the question. Mesa is the primary enemy and they suffer from the worst of defects. Hubris. Manticore will suffer but the rest will fall.
vis:MadMcAl
You’re not getting my point. It’s not that they use the wedgekiller, it’s that they ***invented one***
– so what does that signify? That they do weird designs.
– and the assassination missile? That they have several weird designs.
– and that it is highly stealthy (according to Manty analysis)
Considering the size of the League, the number of such projects should be enormous, so there should be many radical, paradigm breaking, exceptional, things out there (and not deployed by Fleet).
——————-
vis:Chris
What you get when you strip the hyperdrive out is not a fort, since not everything with a wedge has hyper capability, unless I’ve missed something, quite a few things have wedges and can’t hyper.
@Thirdbase
Sure. TDY will survive one way or the other. But at the moment it lies in shambles.
And that Beowulf will be an natural ally to the alliance is a nobrainer.
I just mentioned the 3 powers outside the actual conflict who are at least recognizable and in knowledge of at least the existence of MDM’s and SD(P)’s and what they bring to any fleet that hasn’t any of themself.
Of course there are still Erehwon and Torch. But booth are not realy significant in military terms.
The Peep-ships of Mesa are pre-armistice-ships. They where obsolete when they defected. And now they are hopeless. They are more obsolete than SLN-units.
@Ilkan
Yes, they have some weird research. But I think you misunderstood my point.
There may be as many research projects ongoing as they wish. When the potential buyer, the SLN is not interested they will be shunted. And the SLN sees no need for such untested toys. They won’t buy it. So they won’t integrate it into the ships. So they won’t have it.
And we allready know that the most experienced, economic and powerfull military shipyard in the known universe, Hephaistos, needs 18 month to build an SD.
So we can asume that it will take everyone else longer than that.
Or in other words, even if the corporations of the SL have the most sophisticated military technology in their shelfes, it won’t be available for the SLN for at least 2 years.
And then it is irrelevant.
@Thirdbase
I refer you to At All Costs, pages 817-818 & 824. 60 Apollo birds, at a distance of 150 million kilometres (8 light minutes away) against 68 (damaged) Haven SD(P)s.
1/3 got through!!!
Apollo control does not require Keyhole technology (mass management of large numbers of missiles in the words of DW), and the FTL technology already built into all ships of the Manticoran navy has, in principal, the capability to control Apollo, just not in the numbers necessary to kill 69 SD(Ps in a single salvo. I will be very surprised if Apollo is not retrofitted into the lighter ship classes for the cluster.
Solly SDs will be vulnerable to even light ships if they have Apollo.
Even if the Roland is not controlling the missiles well, the defender does not know which missiles he has to shoot down. And if the missiles are dazzlers or dragon’s teeth, well, having each one do something different would be more impressive, but having them do one of four different things, in great number, might be more impressive.
Of course, it is totally unnecessary for the highly thrifty and well-run Invincible Solarian League Navy to waste money on cute technical tricks, because The Solarian League Navy Is Invincible. See various of my articles across the net discussing this point.
Sooner or later, news of the loss of the Monican BCs will get back to civilization, at which point a real Battle Fleet Fleet will be sent to dispatch the Manticoran neobarbs. A few dozen ships of the wall should be more than enough, so you send ten times under the command of a prominent figure, an Admiral Zeppelin or Colonel Blimp, so Manticore will surrender without a fight.
In my view SLN will not allow Beowolf to leave the league Why? because it is next to Sol! if the manties get control of the beowolf there fleet will be next to Sol
If I was an SLN Admiral I would be willing to lose the entire verge and some of the shell (that is strip every ship from the verge) just to ensure control of the Beowolf end If Beowolf didn’t like it tough it could always be occupied.
Beowolf is prime real estate vital for the league to hold.
My guess is Beowolf will know this and stay in the league but work behind the scenes to for a better day when sanity prevails.
So in short when beowolf falls to the manties Sol will be next when Sol falls the leaguye falls hence the league will not allow beowolf to fall
@21
I disagree with your assertion that if Beowulf falls so will Sol and so will the League. I think you make three major assumptions about the League that are false.
~1. That Sol has a central signifigance to the League for more than just ceremonial reasons.
~2. That Sol wouldn’t leave with Beowulf and maybe a few other of the core worlds if a War did break out.
~3. That The League would be able to convince Beowulf to stay in The League by force if necessary.
The first assumption would hold true if the League was perhaps the size of Haven where the Captial system his primacy and the Government is centralized. We know from the books and from what DW has said that The League is not that centralized Governmentally, and that there are so man planets in the league that Sol is far from a vocal point from a resource perspective. The League would stick together without Sol just fine becuase the Combines and Agencies that run the League would keep it that way.
As for the second one. At this point the common Joe on Sol has more in common with Manticore than it does with the League just like Beowulf does. One can only assume that the Governmnet of Sol would be inclined to listen to its citizenry in this case. We know the League is a joke, but the Government of Sol has as much freedom as any other planet in the League and they have been absent from the dicussion thus far. The reason is simply that they haven’t had to say anything. Yet. Let Manticore get into a war with the League and I think you’ll see Sol jump the other way.
And finally number three. I think that Manticore would be willing and able to come to the aid of Beowulf’s defense fleet in reaction to any attempt by the League to prevent them from breaking from it. And becuase of the Wormhole Junction they would be well placed to do just that. Personally I think part of any Manticoran strategy as it concerns fighting the League would be to do just that. I would use Beowulf as a wedge to pry the core worlds of the old League away from the rest. Sol included! I’d be willing to bet that Beowulf would join with Manticore in a second if they knew what was really going on with Mesa.
All of this hardware discussion begs the question, where does Mesa fit into this? Mesa is building a private fleet, true, but most likely they also plan to use substantial portions of the SLN. All through the first phase of the M-H war, solarian tech was the basis of much of Haven’s advancement. The R&D is out there, and, probably, its primary purpose is to supply Mesa with toys. Still the backbone of any true takeover has to be standard fleet units.
Also, if we recall the two primary confrontations between RMN and SLN designed elements, the SLN ships were crippled by inferior crewing.
J
@ Wyrm, going back to Snippet 46, Apollo is made up of Mk 23 missiles, the Rolands can only fire Mk 16 missiles. So even if they get through to hit the targets, they aren’t powerful enough to take out the SDs. A WWII cruiser could pound away all day at a BB and not sink it, the shells just aren’t big enough to penetrate the armor.
Mesa is not part of the Solarian League, they are an independent Star Nation. The can build and support whatever size fleet they can maintain.
@jn
jn said:
Also, if we recall the two primary confrontations between RMN and SLN designed elements, the SLN ships were crippled by inferior crewing.
Um, while I don’t remember the details of the fight with the four Yahoos, at the Battle of Monica Terekhov was caught with a bunch of pods already aimed at the shipbuilding facilities (a “use it or lose it” situation), two surprises and not enough time to practice fleet tactics with a pickup team.
The “inferior crewing” was almost irrelevant. Monica’s strategic plan was pretty darn good, and the only thing that saved the day was the Ghost Rider sensor platforms that detected the first pair of Solly BCs.
John Roth
Hi iggy thanks for your post
You might well work out to be right I guess time will tell
That said I still stand by my view that if Sol fell to the manties it would be game over an historical analogy could be seen from Rome falling to the barbarians It at the time was not the capital and was only one of many cities in the empire but the blow to the moraale of the empire was huge most historains put sacking of Rome or the battle of Adronople as the end of Rome in the west
I think the same would be here the league might be very decentrialised very vague very big but surely if the manites have control of earth beowolf and from there other planets at the heart of the league it would be a critical blow.
As I said time will tell in seeing what the league will do and who will be closer to being right
I am not sure that the loss of Sol would be critical to the Sollies. For example, would the loss of washington result in the defeat of the US. Compare that with London.