Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:In At All Costs one of the things that Theisman mentioned to Eloise was the Manty introduction of two new weapons. Apollo was the game changer for certain. But I liked...

"We're still evaluating the preliminary reports. From what we've seen so far, it looks like they used two new weapons on us. What makes it hurt worse is that both their new systems appear to be absolutely logical progressions from their damned Ghost Rider technology, and we never even saw them coming.

"We should have realized that sooner or later they were going to strap weapons onto their recon drones. They've demonstrated they can operate them deep inside our defended areas with virtual impunity, and they probably took a certain pleasure from applying a variant of the same technique Saint-Just used to destroy Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin. The bad news is how close they can get them; the good news—such as it is—is that, even so, they can't get them all the way into attack range in stealth. They still have to get into range to execute their attacks, and not even Manty stealth systems can hide them during the last hundred thousand kilometers or so of their runs. They don't have the sort of acceleration rates missiles do, either, and to be used properly, they have to attack virtually from rest, or else they can't loiter until the proper moment. So they have relatively low closing velocities when they come in, and they can be engaged by counter-missiles and standard point defense, now that we know they're out there. Our intercept probabilities won't be good, especially given how little warning we'll have between the moment their drives peak and the moment they reach attack range, but we can probably cope with the threat."

He paused for a moment, then shrugged.

"Actually, this part of it's largely my own personal fault," he said unflinchingly. "Shannon warned me from the beginning that the Moriarty platforms' stealth wouldn't be good enough to hide them if the Manties figured out what they should be looking for. She wanted to build them into purpose-built superdreadnoughts, or at least add them as strap-on components to larger, more heavily defended platforms. I overruled her because of the need to get Moriarty into service as quickly as possible. I shouldn't have. She was right."

To me, that was a dirty okie-doke trick of one upmanship of Sonja's. Rather humorous to me. I imagine Shannon was rolling her eyes on that one afterwards.

But, in the battles with the SLN, I kept looking for their Aegis system to be targeted and destroyed at will, in the same fashion, but it never happened. Of course, in the Second Battle of Manticore there was no need. Is the Aegis system less vulnerable than Moriarty?

And I missed that it was a variation of the tech used on Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin - which was SLN tech. I posited in another thread that that tech had merit. I was right.

.

The Aegis system is not a single central system, but is mounted independently on ships. Each individual ship mounting the Aegis system has had modifications performed on it to allow the mounting of the system.

Admiral Thomas Caparelli reporting to the Queen of Manticore (Elizabeth), the Prime Minister of Manticore (Baron Grantville), and the First Lord of the Admiralty (Earl White Haven):

Mission of Honor, Chapter 18 wrote:“Defensively, there’s some information in the data about something called ‘Aegis,’ which is supposed to be a major advance in missile defense. As nearly as we can tell, though, what it really amounts to is ripping out a couple of broadside energy mounts, replacing them with additional counter-missile fire control and telemetry links, and then using main missile tubes to launch additional canisters of counter-missiles. It’s going to thicken their counter-missile fire, but only at the expense of taking several shipkiller missiles out of an already light broadside. And to make things worse from their perspective, their counter-missiles themselves aren’t as good as ours; the fire control software we’ve been looking at was several generations out of date, by our standards, at the start of the last war with Haven; and even on the ships where they’ve converted the autocannon to laser clusters, they don’t appear to have increased the number of point defense stations appreciably.”

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

cthia wrote:In At All Costs one of the things that Theisman mentioned to Eloise was the Manty introduction of two new weapons. Apollo was the game changer for certain. But I liked...

"We're still evaluating the preliminary reports. From what we've seen so far, it looks like they used two new weapons on us. What makes it hurt worse is that both their new systems appear to be absolutely logical progressions from their damned Ghost Rider technology, and we never even saw them coming.

"We should have realized that sooner or later they were going to strap weapons onto their recon drones. They've demonstrated they can operate them deep inside our defended areas with virtual impunity, and they probably took a certain pleasure from applying a variant of the same technique Saint-Just used to destroy Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin. The bad news is how close they can get them; the good news—such as it is—is that, even so, they can't get them all the way into attack range in stealth. They still have to get into range to execute their attacks, and not even Manty stealth systems can hide them during the last hundred thousand kilometers or so of their runs. They don't have the sort of acceleration rates missiles do, either, and to be used properly, they have to attack virtually from rest, or else they can't loiter until the proper moment. So they have relatively low closing velocities when they come in, and they can be engaged by counter-missiles and standard point defense, now that we know they're out there. Our intercept probabilities won't be good, especially given how little warning we'll have between the moment their drives peak and the moment they reach attack range, but we can probably cope with the threat."

He paused for a moment, then shrugged.

"Actually, this part of it's largely my own personal fault," he said unflinchingly. "Shannon warned me from the beginning that the Moriarty platforms' stealth wouldn't be good enough to hide them if the Manties figured out what they should be looking for. She wanted to build them into purpose-built superdreadnoughts, or at least add them as strap-on components to larger, more heavily defended platforms. I overruled her because of the need to get Moriarty into service as quickly as possible. I shouldn't have. She was right."

To me, that was a dirty okie-doke trick of one upmanship of Sonja's. Rather humorous to me. I imagine Shannon was rolling her eyes on that one afterwards.

But, in the battles with the SLN, I kept looking for their Aegis system to be targeted and destroyed at will, in the same fashion, but it never happened. Of course, in the Second Battle of Manticore there was no need. Is the Aegis system less vulnerable than Moriarty?

And I missed that it was a variation of the tech used on Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin - which was SLN tech. I posited in another thread that that tech had merit. I was right.

.

Vince wrote:The Aegis system is not a single central system, but is mounted independently on ships. Each individual ship mounting the Aegis system has had modifications performed on it to allow the mounting of the system.

Admiral Thomas Caparelli reporting to the Queen of Manticore (Elizabeth), the Prime Minister of Manticore (Baron Grantville), and the First Lord of the Admiralty (Earl White Haven):

Mission of Honor, Chapter 18 wrote:“Defensively, there’s some information in the data about something called ‘Aegis,’ which is supposed to be a major advance in missile defense. As nearly as we can tell, though, what it really amounts to is ripping out a couple of broadside energy mounts, replacing them with additional counter-missile fire control and telemetry links, and then using main missile tubes to launch additional canisters of counter-missiles. It’s going to thicken their counter-missile fire, but only at the expense of taking several shipkiller missiles out of an already light broadside. And to make things worse from their perspective, their counter-missiles themselves aren’t as good as ours; the fire control software we’ve been looking at was several generations out of date, by our standards, at the start of the last war with Haven; and even on the ships where they’ve converted the autocannon to laser clusters, they don’t appear to have increased the number of point defense stations appreciably.”

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Thanks Vince, for clearing up something else that sailed clean over my head. Not least because I would have continued to look for Aegis to be attacked.

But wouldn't the fact that it is limited to the ship seriously decrease its effectiveness?

cthia wrote:Thanks Vince, for clearing up something else that sailed clean over my head. Not least because I would have continued to look for Aegis to be attacked.

But wouldn't the fact that it is limited to the ship seriously decrease its effectiveness?

Aegis isn't a magic weapon or defense system. By GA standards, it's a very modest defensive refit - Haven had an "Aegis-max" refit - with many more energy mounts removed, if not all - on its battlecruisers during the second war.

They did it without slapping a fancy label on it too. The SLN likes its cool-sounding initiatives - Aegis, Raging Justice, Fleet 2000, Case Buccaneer, Halo. It turns out Sollies talk the talk, but can't walk the walk.

cthia wrote:Thanks Vince, for clearing up something else that sailed clean over my head. Not least because I would have continued to look for Aegis to be attacked.

But wouldn't the fact that it is limited to the ship seriously decrease its effectiveness?

Given the number of SLN ships blown out of space to date, I would say it's effectiveness is...less than optimal.

Add that Mike Henke has captured full-up BC's and SD's with AEGIS and has examined them (and their doctrine) to a fare-thee-well, and it's effectiveness (until and unless upgraded) is effectively nil.

munroburton wrote:It's stated somewhere that Hamish spent a fair chunk of his fortune bringing specialists from Beowulf, Sol, etc., as well as the best Manticorans.

Emily's condition stabilised a long time ago. Her regular doctor is just that - a regular doctor.

Emily was injured in the late 1850's or early 1860's PD. In HoS Hamish was just coming off of half-pay in 1862 PD.

cthia wrote:But, in the battles with the SLN, I kept looking for their Aegis system to be targeted and destroyed at will, in the same fashion, but it never happened. Of course, in the Second Battle of Manticore there was no need. Is the Aegis system less vulnerable than Moriarty?

That Aegis isn't something to target that way has been covered already. But you may be thinking of their Halo electronic warfare package - several tethered decoys to provide a much better ECM capability than they'd had before. If you took the Keyhole concept and stripped off bells and whistles - and then core capabilities - and then degraded the tech base and, worse, tactical experience behind it - you'd have Halo, after dispersing it over several smaller platforms rather than two. (That last would be a fine idea, actually, but Keyhole has far too many bells and whistles for that. Something built a bit like the idea of Halo but with current GA technology may make a fine thing for that role either in addition to Keyhole or instead of it on the smaller units.)

You could aim for stripping away that layer of defensive parasites with armed, stealthy drones and/or some proximity soft kill nuclear vehicle. Manticore, of course, would be vastly more vulnerable to that sort of thing, given how every critical combat function currently relies on some sort of parasite (missiles, pods, drones, Keyhole). But apparently that theoretical vulnerability seems to play very little role in actual combat to date. The Triple Ripple saw effective use in exactly one operation before suffering trivial countering from which it has made no recovery whatever.

Anyway, either the RMN hasn't needed to bother neutralizing Halo (which is certainly true) or hasn't been prepared to do so (Mistletoe isn't issued everywhere) when it's had any theoretical desire to.

And I missed that it was a variation of the tech used on Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin - which was SLN tech. I posited in another thread that that tech had merit. I was right.

Sure, some. Mind you, the original weapon took the beacon you'd never reliably get working on enemy vessels, so the SLN quite rightly rejected it as a standard system. Even Mistletoe works in large part because (1) Haven hasn't been able to lock up RMN recon drones well enough to even bother before that (now, they WILL bother, and likely succeed often enough), and (2) it was going for a critical target that was nevertheless both immobile and easily destroyed. Not many targets satisfy that second criterion, and the SLN would not have a prayer of sneaking something like that close enough to GA military targets.

There may be possibilities for use as a terror weapon against civilian shipping though. Mind you, it's also a fine way to make supporting the Solarian League even more sickening and unattractive to anyone still so inclined.

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:But, in the battles with the SLN, I kept looking for their Aegis system to be targeted and destroyed at will, in the same fashion, but it never happened. Of course, in the Second Battle of Manticore there was no need. Is the Aegis system less vulnerable than Moriarty?

That Aegis isn't something to target that way has been covered already. But you may be thinking of their Halo electronic warfare package - several tethered decoys to provide a much better ECM capability than they'd had before. If you took the Keyhole concept and stripped off bells and whistles - and then core capabilities - and then degraded the tech base and, worse, tactical experience behind it - you'd have Halo, after dispersing it over several smaller platforms rather than two. (That last would be a fine idea, actually, but Keyhole has far too many bells and whistles for that. Something built a bit like the idea of Halo but with current GA technology may make a fine thing for that role either in addition to Keyhole or instead of it on the smaller units.)

You could aim for stripping away that layer of defensive parasites with armed, stealthy drones and/or some proximity soft kill nuclear vehicle. Manticore, of course, would be vastly more vulnerable to that sort of thing, given how every critical combat function currently relies on some sort of parasite (missiles, pods, drones, Keyhole). But apparently that theoretical vulnerability seems to play very little role in actual combat to date. The Triple Ripple saw effective use in exactly one operation before suffering trivial countering from which it has made no recovery whatever.

Anyway, either the RMN hasn't needed to bother neutralizing Halo (which is certainly true) or hasn't been prepared to do so (Mistletoe isn't issued everywhere) when it's had any theoretical desire to.

And I missed that it was a variation of the tech used on Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin - which was SLN tech. I posited in another thread that that tech had merit. I was right.

Sure, some. Mind you, the original weapon took the beacon you'd never reliably get working on enemy vessels, so the SLN quite rightly rejected it as a standard system. Even Mistletoe works in large part because (1) Haven hasn't been able to lock up RMN recon drones well enough to even bother before that (now, they WILL bother, and likely succeed often enough), and (2) it was going for a critical target that was nevertheless both immobile and easily destroyed. Not many targets satisfy that second criterion, and the SLN would not have a prayer of sneaking something like that close enough to GA military targets.

There may be possibilities for use as a terror weapon against civilian shipping though. Mind you, it's also a fine way to make supporting the Solarian League even more sickening and unattractive to anyone still so inclined.

You are absolutely correct Jeff. I was thinking of Halo. I knew it as soon as you mentioned ECM. (I knew I had read something akin to "they are deploying them now sir." And I was on the hunt searching for the passage.) Which begs to ask why it wasn't targeted by the drones that are now loaded to bear.

Of course, that's just another surprise awaiting the SLN to discover.

Thanks.

There's little need to take out Halo, at least until a software upgrade makes Sollie ECN more than a "hit me, hit me!" beacon for the ship deploying it.

cthia wrote:In At All Costs one of the things that Theisman mentioned to Eloise was the Manty introduction of two new weapons. Apollo was the game changer for certain. But I liked...
[snipped the text quote about the Mistletoe warhead equipped recon drones]
To me, that was a dirty okie-doke trick of one upmanship of Sonja's. Rather humorous to me. I imagine Shannon was rolling her eyes on that one afterwards.

But, in the battles with the SLN, I kept looking for their Aegis system to be targeted and destroyed at will, in the same fashion, but it never happened. Of course, in the Second Battle of Manticore there was no need. Is the Aegis system less vulnerable than Moriarty?

And I missed that it was a variation of the tech used on Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin - which was SLN tech. I posited in another thread that that tech had merit. I was right.

.

Remember Moriarty was a non-maneuvering defenseless control node, and a bunch of free floating missile pods. None of which are designed to survive hostile fire (Moriarty because, thanks to all the remote relays, you can't find it before the battle is over and the missile pods because they'd be expended before counter-fire could reach them)

But attacking a warship is a lot dicier. If you get into even laserhead range (30-50,000 km) you're very likely to get detected and recon drones move too slowly to be survivable if the enemy gets a lock on them in that close. It's unlikely Mistletoe would be able to knock out the Halo platforms during combat. (Now they might be able to pull off a surprise attack against ships in orbit with their wedged down - that would be a different kind of messy)


Yes, a variant of the underway attack was effective against the yacht, but only because there was a homing beacon aboard it. If the super stealthy drone had had to use onboard sensors they'd have been localized and killed by the escorting Shrikes. StateSec had the same issue using them against hypothetical rebellious PRN naval units - they had to hide remotely triggered homing beacons during refits because without those even drones couldn't pull off the attack against a Havenite warship's sensors/defenses.

Manticore's Ghost Rider drones though have already been proven to be almost totally invisible to SLN sensors.


Example 1) Truman in Beowulf space, when Admiral whats-her-name, from the SLN tried to bully and threaten her way to the Junction had absolutely zero idea the Ghost Rider drones were there, or even the Hermes buoys before Truman actively showed off how close they were.

Example 2) Terekhov while commanding the Destroyer flotilla, in what two different incursions into Solly space used Ghost Rider and was practically reading the fingerprints of the Solly technicians, they were getting the drones that close in.

Example 3) Battle of Spindle, pretty sure Henke was throwing powered drones practically into Crandall's face and not just relying on a shell that stayed nearby.



Ok, I'll admit example 2 might be a little bit exaggerated, but so far as we've seen, Ghost Rider is even more invisible to current SLN forces, than the first generation Ghost Rider pre-Buttercup stuff was against Haven.

Mistletoe is literally nothing but a Ghost Rider drone with either a laserhead, or a standard 'contact' nuke for payload instead of sensors.

If Honor wasn't quite so honorable, and feeling pity for most people she's fighting, the opening of a battle wouldn't be pods belching missiles, it'd be a Ghost Rider drone (or two) slamming a contact nuke into the enemy flagship's forward impeller room. A single contact nuke takes out entire ships in shipyards, so slamming two or three into a SD (or Lenny Det) would possibly be overkill. But still cheaper than firing off entire 6-pod salvos of Apollo birds.


Manticore isn't quite that savage, the Andermani might be that savage if it was a MAlign fleet they were engaging (gotta get revenge for the attempted assassination on Hofschultze... or was Hofschultze the assassin and it was someone else the target, I forget?)