Solarian Military Catchup Attempts

fallsfromtrees wrote:

SWM wrote:The Cataphract is not an SDM. An SDM is a Single Drive Missile. Long-range SDMs have existed in every navy for decades. Remember the Haven-designed ground-based missiles at Blackbird? That is an example of a classical long-ranged SDM. It had a range even longer than capital missiles of the time. That's the kind of thing that was used for system defense before MDMs and pods. There were probably also space-based versions--too large to carry on ships but good for system defense.

I think that here the acronym SDM is being used for System Defense Missile, not Single Drive Missile - yes, no?

No, we are talking about what the Solarian League Navy can do with equipment it already has. The poster pretty clearly (in my mind) meant Single Drive Missiles, which are already within the capability of Solarian technology.

Jonathan_S wrote:However given those specs I'm really surprised that we didn't see those overpowered missiles deployed in a pod based format at any point during the 1st war.
Sure, you could cram in less per pod, but if I figured their numbers correctly they'd had a nice range advantage and an impressive 50% terminal velocity advantage over a pod of 'normal' capital ship missiles.

Those missiles were huge. They were too big for pods, and certainly could not be launched from ships. But it seems plausible that they (or something similar) could be deployed in a pod-like launcher with a single tube. But their very size makes it hard to deploy very many. That must be the reason they were not seen in the text of the invasion of the People's Republic. Perhaps there were some at Barnett. We didn't see that battle clearly, and that would be one of the most likely place to have them, if any did.

Just to compare though, those numbers are far short of what I think the max range and endurance of a Mark 14 ERM / Mark 36 LERM missile is good for; ditto for the Technodyne pod missiles used at Monica - those seem to have basically the same acceleration numbers of a similar era single drive (non-ERM) missile, but have higher drive endurance.

Yes, by then the old missiles were clearly outmatched. But the Blackbird missiles were only given as an example of what could be done with single drive missiles even before the Havenite war started. The technology to build long-range single-drive missiles is well within the reach of the Solarian League, and they could probably do considerably better than the Blackbird missiles without too much difficulty.

lyonheart wrote:

I'm also curious how the GA might patch into SL system communications, particularly the planetary webs to bury or encyst its own news into the network for as long as possible to counter the Sollie version, perhaps a virus type program that would keep hiding itself while popping up to provide answers with news and video of what really happened with news updates, asking the questions the bureaucrats don't want asked or answered.]

I like this one. The internet we have has in real practice been providing information some big shots don't like. The problem is info overload - sorting the seeds from the chaff. Search engines help - to a very limited extent

Hi DDHv,

I can't add anything from personal experience, I'm not eager to go digital, nor a software developer, but I have a few nephews who are, but what will system nets look like in 2000 years?

Given manty tech from the textev, there will still be programing holes and easily found back doors etc, and as some have joked here Microsoft 2008 will still be the machine language of far too many e-chips etc.

Even at light speed, the timing requirement around the system might be an easily exploited loophole if the RMN can give its inserted virus messages an apparent legal time stamp and priority over any that order it deleted.

Can we hear from Bu9 on this and other possibilities please, or is it already part of the upcoming book?

L

DDHv wrote:

lyonheart wrote:

I'm also curious how the GA might patch into SL system communications, particularly the planetary webs to bury or encyst its own news into the network for as long as possible to counter the Sollie version, perhaps a virus type program that would keep hiding itself while popping up to provide answers with news and video of what really happened with news updates, asking the questions the bureaucrats don't want asked or answered.]

I like this one. The internet we have has in real practice been providing information some big shots don't like. The problem is info overload - sorting the seeds from the chaff. Search engines help - to a very limited extent

You have to realize that security was not part of the design for most of the critical internet protocols. They are still working at trying to secure DNS and BGP, while email is nearly hopeless.

It's pretty likely that this won't be the case with the replacement to the Internet.

kzt wrote:You have to realize that security was not part of the design for most of the critical internet protocols. They are still working at trying to secure DNS and BGP, while email is nearly hopeless.

It's pretty likely that this won't be the case with the replacement to the Internet.

E-mail isn't hopeless at all, it's just that every modern mailreader isn't just a mailreader anymore and every security problem with e-mail is always because of the content can do funny things with your reader. Saying that e-mail isn't secure is like saying a paper isn't secure, it's just a bearer of information.

I'm still using a text-based no-frills e-mail reader and I never have any problems and any attached documents can be saved and scanned before being opened.

The easiest way to disseminate information in the League is just to deliver the information to the newsfaxes, no need to hack or release a virues; the faxes will propagate the information just fine.

Joat42 wrote:E-mail isn't hopeless at all, it's just that every modern mailreader isn't just a mailreader anymore and every security problem with e-mail is always because of the content can do funny things with your reader. Saying that e-mail isn't secure is like saying a paper isn't secure, it's just a bearer of information.

You don't understand. I mean there is no authentication to email AND is sent as clear text across the internet. You have NO IDEA who sent the email, you email system just has to trust it. There are some attempts to fix this, but they are very, very painful. It's pretty much hopeless.

kzt wrote:

Joat42 wrote:E-mail isn't hopeless at all, it's just that every modern mailreader isn't just a mailreader anymore and every security problem with e-mail is always because of the content can do funny things with your reader. Saying that e-mail isn't secure is like saying a paper isn't secure, it's just a bearer of information.

You don't understand. I mean there is no authentication to email AND is sent as clear text across the internet. You have NO IDEA who sent the email, you email system just has to trust it. There are some attempts to fix this, but they are very, very painful. It's pretty much hopeless.

There are protocols that can authenticate the sender of the email (SPF/DKIM for example). The message itself can be PGP-signed, but here we also have the problem that not all mail-clients support it.

The painful part is that there is no real consensus on what system to use which leads to the mess we have today .

My point was that it's entirely possible to send signed and verified data via email, there is no security problem doing that.

Joat42 wrote:My point was that it's entirely possible to send signed and verified data via email, there is no security problem doing that.

Oh, sure. The average corporate internal mail system (like exchange or groupwise) is much more secure than internet mail (SMTP), but they interact via SMTP. Replacing a core protocol like SMTP with something that fixes any of myriad issues is just enormously painful. When it is eventually done I suspect it will be a huge improvement and much more secure.

kzt wrote:

Joat42 wrote:My point was that it's entirely possible to send signed and verified data via email, there is no security problem doing that.

The problem you have is that the is currently no way to verify that the public key you are using for PGP actually belongs to the person you think it does -how do you generate a reliable source of public keys.