Apollo Counter.

The wedges block RF signals too. There are a lot of wedges, and the antennas face the rear. So unless you have the recon drones behind the missiles they can't be heard. Plus it's likely the recon drones are not designed to connect to the fire control system of MDMs.

SharkHunter wrote:

SWM wrote:I think there is one partial counter to Apollo that is relatively easy for the League to develop. FTL Comm jamming.

While the League cannot make directional FTL comm signals with any useful bandwidth, they do know how to make the raw signal. It should be fairly straightforward to create FTL comm noise, and turn it into a jamming signal.

This will only partially degrade the effectiveness of Apollo. But it would, for instance, eliminate cross-chatter between Apollo command missiles, and force the command missile to fall back on internal AI routines rather than utilizing the full target picture from all ships and missiles. By itself it probably isn't enough, but it is a very large step.

Doubtful. It's stated that the Apollo missile's detection is obscured by the 8 missiles in front of it, so the com path back to the ship would be presumably be similarly free of jamming precise enough to block it.

I never figured this out until I asked myself this: "given that a wedge is shaped like an open V, how does wedge interference obscure ships or missiles behind it?" We think of these things as "head to head" like a dogfight or calvary charge, but rereading quite a few books, the result has been an increased realization that "all missile attacks and fleet maneuvers have an aspect of obliqueness and/or rotation to them, until the last moments".

The other problem is that if you're putting out all that FTL noise, that gives the RMN an unspoofable way of determining where your ships are, and just following that FTL signal on in to the ship, resulting in a single volley KABOOM.

You're assuming that the FTL jamming is coming from the ships. I was not making that assumption. Send out drones which, on cue, deliberate miscalibrate their wedges in order to put out gravitic noise (or whatever mechanism will do the job). It is a lot easier to generate noise than a signal. The drones don't have to fire up the jamming until the missiles are passing them; that way they don't become targets and they have a clear line of sight to both the control missiles and the controlling ships.

SharkHunter wrote:
Given that an attack missile locks to "light speed channel x", how hard is it to lock that same frequency to the drone that is transmitting targeting info back to the mother ship, designed to take over ONLY if the Apollo missile control fails? The result would be that the "designator" is automatically and already in place for THAT missile whether it was last updated by an FTL-updated AI command, or with just targeting info using the same light speed link from a close in drone in "non-Apollo fallback mode".

The simple answer is drones don't mount firecontrol systems. A drone would need a full up firecontrol system to "speak" directly to the missiles. What you are mentioning was asked before and shot down for that very reason.

Apollo Command missiles use low powered Laser links to connect to their brood, instead of full up firecontrol links, and they are able to do that because they are moving in formation with the missiles, and only a few 100 Km away from them.

Missiles reach target acquision at 2-300,000 Km from the target - So the control system used by ACMs would not work between drones and Missiles, and the system mounted on ships in the honorverse is just too big.

Another item to consider: prior to Apollo, when have we ever seen control of a missile pass between ships while in flight? We havn't - Part of a firecontrol system is an encrypted, secure channel - most likely via a narrow angle transmitter/reciever on tha back of the missile to prevent the firecontrol from being jammed and overtaken by an opponent. Once the connection between a missile and a launching ship was cut, the missile is on it's own - the launching ship or another ship cannot regain control.

A Drone, positioned in front of the Missile next to an enemy could not take over firecontrol.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Doubtful. It's stated that the Apollo missile's detection is obscured by the 8 missiles in front of it, so the com path back to the ship would be presumably be similarly free of jamming precise enough to block it.

I never figured this out until I asked myself this: "given that a wedge is shaped like an open V, how does wedge interference obscure ships or missiles behind it?" We think of these things as "head to head" like a dogfight or calvary charge, but rereading quite a few books, the result has been an increased realization that "all missile attacks and fleet maneuvers have an aspect of obliqueness and/or rotation to them, until the last moments".

The other problem is that if you're putting out all that FTL noise, that gives the RMN an unspoofable way of determining where your ships are, and just following that FTL signal on in to the ship, resulting in a single volley KABOOM.

You're assuming that the FTL jamming is coming from the ships. I was not making that assumption. Send out drones which, on cue, deliberate miscalibrate their wedges in order to put out gravitic noise (or whatever mechanism will do the job). It is a lot easier to generate noise than a signal. The drones don't have to fire up the jamming until the missiles are passing them; that way they don't become targets and they have a clear line of sight to both the control missiles and the controlling ships.

First to SharkHunter's point, a wedge has a non-trivial incline on it. I'll use the example of an SD's wedge because thanks to the infodump on wedge geometry we have the best info on. From head on there's an 80 km gap where you can see down the center of the wedge, but above and below that the incline of the wedge's planes put an impenetrable wall 150 km "high" and 300 km "wide". That's a pretty big pair of sensor shadows to be casting - and that's from a single ship. Put a formation there and the combined sensor shadows just get bigger.

SWM, it's possible you could create FTL "noise" with something as simple as a drone, broadside on towards the 'target', spinning (like a top) as fast as it can. The changing aspects of the wedge, between seeing broadside on between the planes, to seeing the flat of a wedge plane pointed right at you, seems like it could cause a varying amplitude set of "ripples". Alter the wedge's power at the same time and it might all be enough to create a crude, and very visible, jammer.

n7axw wrote:You are right. But it probably wouldn't be hard to design drones with those capabilities if it turned out to be a worthwhile thing to do.

It is worthwhile; they call them Keyhole.

The problem is that a Keyhole (I or II) requires more power than an RD can supply, hence the beamed power requirement, and is far larger than an RD to make room for a hundred fire-control channels (or more) and integral point defense and CM control channels.

NB: Per RFC, Counter-missile control channels and Attack-missile control channels are not interchangeable and neither is compatible with normal communications links.

Starting a new comment, too much to snip and paste, so here's my updated "FTL missile control can't be easily countered" argument, including what I've read in terms of the can't link a drone to a missile points, etc.

1. I think with KH-II, MDM missile control could be passed.

Otherwise, lose the ship with a KH-II, lose ALL of those missiles in any salvo(s) that it is controlling. Likely that's a "phase locked backup" type of thing, however that's still "to the rear" which doesn't address the jamming question.

2. Let's assume that the Apollo missile isn't destroyed, just jammed between ship and the missile's AI.

I'm thinking about how Henke et. al did a sim to use an Apollo missile LIKE an RD, then programmed a following salvo to use the info. , even if that's ship a,b, or c, or designated cross link ax, by, or cz, if you catch my drift.

If I were an EWO designer, I'd make sure that the Apollo would be designed to receive uptake from whatever known RMN source that can send the proper authentications.

3. The Ghost Rider drones DO have the long distance transmitters, and all sorts of encoding capacity to pass targeting info, ECM patterns, etc. back to their ships.

So here's my "modded"/question... Could the Apollo be programmed to receive uptake directly from a Ghost-Rider drone or drone array if the launching ship loses lock on the 23-E? Granted, that only helps in the last few seconds, but that would be enough to insure the high percentage hits, I'd think. It's not like the AI on the Apollo isn't already tracking it's target rather closely the whole way.

Theemile wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:
Given that an attack missile locks to "light speed channel x", how hard is it to lock that same frequency to the drone that is transmitting targeting info back to the mother ship, designed to take over ONLY if the Apollo missile control fails? The result would be that the "designator" is automatically and already in place for THAT missile whether it was last updated by an FTL-updated AI command, or with just targeting info using the same light speed link from a close in drone in "non-Apollo fallback mode".

The simple answer is drones don't mount firecontrol systems. A drone would need a full up firecontrol system to "speak" directly to the missiles. What you are mentioning was asked before and shot down for that very reason.

Apollo Command missiles use low powered Laser links to connect to their brood, instead of full up firecontrol links, and they are able to do that because they are moving in formation with the missiles, and only a few 100 Km away from them.

Missiles reach target acquision at 2-300,000 Km from the target - So the control system used by ACMs would not work between drones and Missiles, and the system mounted on ships in the honorverse is just too big.

Another item to consider: prior to Apollo, when have we ever seen control of a missile pass between ships while in flight? We havn't - Part of a firecontrol system is an encrypted, secure channel - most likely via a narrow angle transmitter/reciever on tha back of the missile to prevent the firecontrol from being jammed and overtaken by an opponent. Once the connection between a missile and a launching ship was cut, the missile is on it's own - the launching ship or another ship cannot regain control.

A Drone, positioned in front of the Missile next to an enemy could not take over firecontrol.

Minor quibble: A ship can regain control of a missile (using lightspeed fire control links) only if the controlling ship has told that missile (or group of missiles) to go temporarily in autonomous flight mode (not terminal attack mode) until a new update is sent. However, if the missile loses communications with its controlling ship at its end, it goes into fully autonomous mode and the controlling ship cannot reacquire it.

We've seen this used in the Honorverse by at least two different forces that came up with the idea on their own: the RHN and Maya sector.

It's called "rotating control links".

SharkHunter wrote:Starting a new comment, too much to snip and paste, so here's my updated "FTL missile control can't be easily countered" argument, including what I've read in terms of the can't link a drone to a missile points, etc.

1. I think with KH-II, MDM missile control could be passed.

Otherwise, lose the ship with a KH-II, lose ALL of those missiles in any salvo(s) that it is controlling. Likely that's a "phase locked backup" type of thing, however that's still "to the rear" which doesn't address the jamming question.

I'm just going to chime in in support of this one point.

The infodump on Keyhole Survivability says that a squadron of Keyhole II equipped ships will hand off current FTL missile control around the squadron, throughout the missiles' flight, to keep the enemy from localizing the Keyhole II platforms.

n7axw wrote:Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that Apollo was used against Filereta. The range was close enough that it wasn't needed. In addition, one of the ideas brought up by Prichard was "to save those God aweful missiles for use against a more worthy target" by letting in Theisman's fleet to help.

There is some counter textev. In her conversation with Filereta, Honor mentions the ftl link.

So I'm not sure. Does anyone else have an impression?

Don

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I think that was the original offer.
Honor noted in her discussion with Filereta that all her missiles has real-time fire-control and EW; sounds like FTL Apollo to me -- mostly system defense pods.

The RHN contribution to the effort in the end was the closing the back-door of the mouse-trap.

I am sure there will be PLENTY of appropriate targets for Lester Tourville and Genevieve Chin to take out with their capacitor powered missiles.

-- Stewart

The only thing I would like to chime in with is a simple numbers point. As has been demonstrated in each battle with the SLN, they are not prepared for the missile storm they face. Some refuse to believe it, others think it's impossible to control. What ever they believe, it is the reality of the Haven Sector combat environment. Thousands of missiles in a salvo, with multiple salvos in flight.

Even if the missiles are sent with light speed controls, and the SLN has plenty of time to see them coming, their defenses are beyond saturated.

And as some one noted earlier, this is before you count Dragon's Teeth and Dazzlers, etc. All the other tech upgrades the Alliance has will just make the attack wave that much more deadly.

The other thing not really considered is the lack of skill in battlefleet. They can't stack a wall the way the RMN can. Or even as good as the Havenites could. Their skills are beyond rusty.

So my thought is that even if you kill the Apollo control missile, the wave of missiles is still thick enough to destroy the SLN.