New passive defense system

Actually, you could use it in a single ship situation. if you look at the drawing in http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0 there is a lot of space to place a drone with a 10-20 km wedge. If you tuck it close to the sidewall an rotate it 90 to the ship wedge you greatly reduce the vulnerability of the ship to laser heads. A laser head attacking a rolled ship has something like 150 milliseconds in which to fine tune aiming and fire. If you put a wedge that covers much of the target that should have a dramatic effect on accuracy as it reduces the time to something like two 30 millisecond windows instead of a single 150 ms window.

I absolutely agree on this point. Please note that KEYHOLE I upgrade is going to do far more to increase survivability than shield drones. However; once you have KEYHOLE I the shield drones would be the next, logical step.

Destroyers aren't going to have this shield tech.

CAs might not be able to have this shield tech.

BCs would definately be able to have this shield tech.

SDs would have this shield tech in spades.

Is it possible that KEYHOLE I and KEYHOLE II platforms are already fullfilling this function or at least can in some situations. Think of the geometry. Ship is rolled up to interpose its impeller wedge. KEYHOLE platforms are deployed above and below the wedge. Weber doesn't state how close to the ship the KH platforms are stationed. However; especially with KEYHOLE II they'd be tucked in close to minimze lightspeed time lag. My guess is somewhere around 5,000 to 10,000 kilometers normally, but can be tucked closer. The impeller wedge on a 100,000 ton KEYHOLE II platform is going to be large enough to be a very effective shield.

No reason every navy couldn't have Keyhole and passive drone shields.

That’s probably a dump comment but anyway, who says that Keyhole platforms have wedges?
I always thought that they are tractored just like pods.

Star Knight wrote:That’s probably a dump comment but anyway, who says that Keyhole platforms have wedges?
I always thought that they are tractored just like pods.

David Weber.

"They do have some onboard propulsive capability, using the same impeller hardware which was developed for the Ghost Rider recon drones, but that capability is purely secondary. In theory, they could maintain the station on their onboard drives while remaining in the basket to be hit by power transmissions from the mothership and to continue to perform their relay functions."

So there is a wedge but it is not used at all, especially not for Missile Defense.
Still dont think this could have a future.

I imagine something more like this from the Pearl:

One interesting thing the RMN has observed now that Keyhole-Two has actually been deployed in combat is that the platforms' "self-defense" capability has proved a very valuable adjunct to be Navy's starships' antimissile defenses. Indeed, our good friend Sonja Hemphill is currently tinkering around with a considerably smaller, simpler platform whose primary function would be missile defense and which could probably be fitted to smaller combatants.

But lets remember, its not needed for a very long time now. The Sollies wont be able to generate the missile salvos we saw in the havanite wars.

By the time that Manticore has reconstituted its industrial capacity from the ground up, many of the nearly two thousand former SL member systems and untold hundreds of independant systems whose industrial capacity and technology is nearly comparable to Manticore's at the start of the first Havenite War will have reverse engineered MDMs and missile pods and possibly microfusion plants as well. Even in the short term they can do varients of Technodyne's missile defense pods limpeted to their ships carrying massively large but still effective Multi-Stage Missiles similar to but much larger than the Caterphract.

WIth hundreds of potential opponents whose combined fleets massively outnumber the SEM's, the RMN should anticipate having to fight battles outnumberred ten-to-one. Even with APOLLO, a squadron of SD(P)s raiding an enemy system that is defended by a hundred or more SD varients backed up by system defense pods will get hammerred unless their defenses are improved.

Has it occurred to you that if your optimism were warrented there would be no point in Weber writing any more books?

Star Knight wrote:So there is a wedge but it is not used at all, especially not for Missile Defense.
Still dont think this could have a future.

I imagine something more like this from the Pearl:

One interesting thing the RMN has observed now that Keyhole-Two has actually been deployed in combat is that the platforms' "self-defense" capability has proved a very valuable adjunct to be Navy's starships' antimissile defenses. Indeed, our good friend Sonja Hemphill is currently tinkering around with a considerably smaller, simpler platform whose primary function would be missile defense and which could probably be fitted to smaller combatants.

But lets remember, its not needed for a very long time now. The Sollies wont be able to generate the missile salvos we saw in the havanite wars.

namelessfly wrote:By the time that Manticore has reconstituted its industrial capacity from the ground up, many of the nearly two thousand former SL member systems and untold hundreds of independant systems whose industrial capacity and technology is nearly comparable to Manticore's at the start of the first Havenite War will have reverse engineered MDMs and missile pods and possibly microfusion plants as well.

Why should they?
They have a long way to go before they reach the armament levels and thinking of even prewar days in the Haven Quadrant.
People seem to forget that those Sollys have been at peace for more than a millennia!
The SLN aside, there is literally nobody around whos actually knows how to organize and fight a decent interstellar war.
That fact will slow them down considerably, no matter what tech base.
They will reverse engineer MDMsm, Mikrofusion, FTL, SD(P)s or whatever?
What makes you think that that will occur?
Most of your 2000 worlds wont see much of Haven Quadrant tech. They will look upon the guys around them and build accordingly for the most part.
I said it before and i will say it again, most of the solly worlds wont even think about going to war with Manticore after the League is done. Thats just not in their interest.

namelessfly wrote:Even in the short term they can do varients of Technodyne's missile defense pods limpeted to their ships carrying massively large but still effective Multi-Stage Missiles similar to but much larger than the Caterphract.

Yes they could. And thats nothing a Invictus with Keyhole 2 cant handle.
Manticoran Anti Missile Doctrin is so advanced, it will be a long way to catch up. And not just range. Think EW too.

namelessfly wrote:WIth hundreds of potential opponents whose combined fleets massively outnumber the SEM's, the RMN should anticipate having to fight battles outnumberred ten-to-one. Even with APOLLO, a squadron of SD(P)s raiding an enemy system that is defended by a hundred or more SD varients backed up by system defense pods will get hammerred unless their defenses are improved.

So you take two squadrons. What timeframe are we talking about here? 20tyears from now?
I really dont see the problem. Manticoran assets are limited in the short term. 5 tyears from now Manticore will be okay and the Sollies still in big trouble. 10tyears from now the Sollies will recover while Manticore will have surpassed pre Oyster Bay production levels (not that i think they would actually continue to build ships, theres no need).

namelessfly wrote:Has it occurred to you that if your optimism were warrented there would be no point in Weber writing any more books?

If you ask me we are looking in the wrong direction. Forget what Solly worlds can do. Thats for a story 20 or 30 tyears from now. And Weber doesnt want to tell this story yet (if at all). The next Enemy will be Mesa. With totally different tech. I dont expect to hear much from the League after it has fallen. It will all be about Mesa and the RF, not some random Solly Worlds who rearm.
How much main stream novels are left anyway? Five or Six?
I expect the series to be over after the Mesans are defeated.

Nameless I agree.

Did something thinking about some things we talked about off line a ways back.

Lets take those missile pods from the Battle of Monica. They had a drive endurance of ~225 seconds (I actually could make a case for 240 Seconds) and an Accel of ~43,000 g's.

If we were to say double the dimensions only 4 missiles to the same size pods. Not so good but what do we get. 3 times the internal volume. If you were able to make a 2 drive missile in said volume what would the performance numbers look like. A full powered range of ~54 million km @ ~189,000 km/s. If a ballistic component of 3 minutes was incorporated into the time between the two drives the range would go up to ~76 million km.

So if one of those systems had 10,000 of those pods that would be 40,000 missiles launched at 6 ships in the RMN squadron. Which would be a total of 7,000 each. Granted that is going to be hugely light lagged and wildly inaccurate but I am thinking that they would probably hit something. I wonder if the sensors on said missiles being twice the size and better computers than the RHN was able to use might not be better in the hit rate problems inherent in light lagged.

Then we run into the whole but their pods so we will use mistletoe against them. But wait instead of having pods independently deployed we just load them onto a "derelict freighters" in orbit. When it comes time to fire said pods you just expel them into space out the freighters and launch them. First thing that the raiding force knows is they have a huge missile wave coming at them.

But none of this will ever happen because it has been decreed otherwise by readers. Just like the only people that need to improve their missile defense is the RMN and its allies. I would actually argue that the defenses proposed by bfoote and lyonheart are far more applicable to the people who are looking at getting hammered by missiles from people who have already demonstrated that they have missiles that can attack at 27 million miles from a standing start (tapes provided by the RMN) and ~54 million miles (tapes provided).

As far as said defenses are concerned in the topic I am still mulling exactly what the problems are and if I can actually think of how to address them as a reasoned response. So, I haven't come to a conclusion on it. Though I do agree with solbergb that for bfoote's idea an RD type drive makes more sense. Longer duration and restartable.

Trying to picture the geometry where the remote drive generator is reliably controlled by the protected platform but not sure how much of the concern is valid.

T2M