Apollo, inspired by the KIROV and SS-N-19 antiship missile?

JohnRoth wrote:[2] 2000 years. Take a deep breath, let it out, repeat once, take another deep breath, let it out, repeat for 15 minutes. Now, isn't everything clearer?

A thought to chill your bones:

How much could Micro$oft's programmers screw up if you gave them 2,000 years to work with?

BobG wrote:Again, my intent was not to have the RDs act as Hermes buoys. Look at the geometry. An RD is transmitting a data stream to it's launching ship, and the attack missiles are on that path (within a couple of degrees, anyway). We know that grav pulses are detectable along that path, because Terekov was concerned about it when he attacked the pair of ex-Peep ships. As long as the data streams are available to the missiles, why not make them available as tactical information on the targets? The only concern I have in that regard is whether the Apollo control missiles can handle that many simultaneous grav pulse data streams.

Even that can be handled by simultaneously streaming the data by laser to one of the Apollo missiles. With beam divergence a function of the inverse of the frequency, the (presumably UV) laser would probably be capable of transmitting to multiple missiles, who would dutifully share the data. As for Mk 16s, if they were in the cone of the laser comm, they could individually utilize the data.

For that matter, except that it would be a bit more vulnerable to jamming than a laser, you could just use radio to send the ECM profile towards the Apollo control missiles.

Yes, laser or radio is speed of light. But since the Apollo missiles are closing on the enemy (and on the recon drones) the relayed ECM and targeting profile gets more and more timely as the missiles approach attack range. (The inverse of the normal lightspeed fire control link issue)

Weird Harold wrote:Extrapolating from encryption keys growth rate from 8-bit computer systems to modern encryption keys -- 128 or 256 bytes, not bits, IIRC -- two or three thousand more years could inflate them to a couple of Gigabytes.

Um, no. I'm not aware of any widely used encryption scheme that has keys as large as 128 bytes.

AES is 128, 256, or 514 bits
Triple-DES is 168 bits (though normally due to parity bits stored as a 192 bit value)
Blowfish supports 32 to 448 bits

Asymmetric keys are bigger, but even there
RSA is commonly 1024 - 4096 bits. Ok we're up to 64 bytes on the high end.
And the newer algorithms are things like eliptic curve which are designed to provide the same security with smaller key sizes.

Asymmetric key sizes might need to scale significantly with improvements in things like factoring, because by definition you can start your attack with some information about the key (because you're presumed to have the public half)

But symmetric keys shouldn't need to grow to more than maybe a couple of kilobytes (and that's being very very paranoid). There are already mathematical proofs that seem to say that 256 AES keys are so strong that there is no theoretical way to break them in the remaining life of the earth. (Although flaws in the randomness used to create them might undermine that)

And keep in mind that crypto strength can be proportional to the useful life of the data. In this case we need the key to be secure just long enough that an enemy can't hack it during the battle (which would allow them to inject false ECM/targetting data). But even if they intercepted the RD data and broke it even days after the fight it's of minimal use to them (a bit in that they could derive some details about the capabilities of the RD, but the break provides no direct tactical data)


I don't think we need to worry about gigabyte sized crypto keys to secure tactical combat signalling.

BobG wrote:

Annachie wrote:Come onRFC, one of the first rules of weapon design has to be countering whatever you design. Surely the Manties alteady have an FTL jammer that they can signal through waiting in the wings.

Ah... What counter to nuclear weapons have we had for the last 60-odd years? Other than MAD, and I don't think that is a counter.

-- Bob G

The best countermeasure to nuclear weapons is the simple shovel.

With a shovel, a couple of doors and a few hours warning, you can build a simple trench shelter that will protect you from nuclear fallout, direct nuclear radiation and thermal radiation which can be the biggest killers.

With somewhat more sophisticated tools, railroad ties and more dirt, you can build a shelter very similar to a shelter that survived even though it was only 100 yards from ground zero at Hiroshima.

With a trackhoe and a moderately sophisticated steel fabrication shop, you can build a shelter similar in design to a underground fuel storage tank that will allow you to survive the detonation of a one megaton nuke 1/2 mile away. Large diameter concrete sewer pipe works well too.

Earth penetrating nukes with accurate guidance are effective against hardened bunkers. I offer the Pershing 2 missile as an example.

However; against a shelter that is more than two crater radi plus penetration depth deep, it is useless as long as the shelter is seld contained and has multiple exits.


The permormance of Israel's iron dome nukes the idea that antimissile systems are futile. Granted that a 1 km/s rag head rocket is easier to intercept than a 7 km/s ICBM RV, you can afford to build multiple, multimillion dollar interceptors to intercept the nuke.

We don't have a counter to nuclear weapons only because a bunch of imbeciles decided that MAD was the Holy Grail of deterrence. MAD men do stupid things such as accept Vladimir Putin's demand that we cancel the ABM radar in Poland and depend on Russia to provide us with early warning of an Iranian missile launch.

BobG wrote:Again, my intent was not to have the RDs act as Hermes buoys. Look at the geometry. An RD is transmitting a data stream to it's launching ship, and the attack missiles are on that path (within a couple of degrees, anyway). We know that grav pulses are detectable along that path, because Terekov was concerned about it when he attacked the pair of ex-Peep ships. As long as the data streams are available to the missiles, why not make them available as tactical information on the targets? The only concern I have in that regard is whether the Apollo control missiles can handle that many simultaneous grav pulse data streams.

Actually, the missiles are almost certainly not in the beam from the RDs to the ship. The beams are extremely narrow. Even as far back as HoTQ, enemy ships were only detect pulses for a few seconds as they passed through the beam--and those pulses were coming from beyond the hyper limit. That implies an extremely narrow beam. Missiles have to diverge from the direct path to the target by tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The beams from the RDs near the targets are not wide enough to include both the missiles and the ship.

If you want the RD to send information to the missiles, the RD has to specifically aim a beam at the missiles.

namelessfly wrote:

BobG wrote:Ah... What counter to nuclear weapons have we had for the last 60-odd years? Other than MAD, and I don't think that is a counter.

-- Bob G

The best countermeasure to nuclear weapons is the simple shovel.

With a shovel, a couple of doors and a few hours warning, you can build a simple trench shelter that will protect you from nuclear fallout, direct nuclear radiation and thermal radiation which can be the biggest killers.

With somewhat more sophisticated tools, railroad ties and more dirt, you can build a shelter very similar to a shelter that survived even though it was only 100 yards from ground zero at Hiroshima.

With a trackhoe and a moderately sophisticated steel fabrication shop, you can build a shelter similar in design to a underground fuel storage tank that will allow you to survive the detonation of a one megaton nuke 1/2 mile away. Large diameter concrete sewer pipe works well too.

Earth penetrating nukes with accurate guidance are effective against hardened bunkers. I offer the Pershing 2 missile as an example.

However; against a shelter that is more than two crater radi plus penetration depth deep, it is useless as long as the shelter is seld contained and has multiple exits.


The permormance of Israel's iron dome nukes the idea that antimissile systems are futile. Granted that a 1 km/s rag head rocket is easier to intercept than a 7 km/s ICBM RV, you can afford to build multiple, multimillion dollar interceptors to intercept the nuke.

We don't have a counter to nuclear weapons only because a bunch of imbeciles decided that MAD was the Holy Grail of deterrence. MAD men do stupid things such as accept Vladimir Putin's demand that we cancel the ABM radar in Poland and depend on Russia to provide us with early warning of an Iranian missile launch.

In this instance, I have to agree with Nameless about MAD. At the time it was initially proposed, it might have made sense. These days, it persists for (I think) three main (and very bad) reasons:

(1) It's been around so long that it has acquired the patina of "Everyone Knows" which is the reason most obsolete strategic concepts linger long past their "use-by" date.

(2) Some scientists (who shall remain nameless; no double entendre intended) publically endorsed the "nuclear winter" scenario/specter/bugaboo long after the assumptions and numbers which produced it had been debunked as highly questionable, at best. Their reasoning was that any nuclear war/use of nuclear weapons would be so terrible that any argument (be it ever so false) which would tend to prevent it from ever happening was valid even if its scientific basis was a crock. In a similar vein, some (I would argue many) of the present day proponents MAD believe that by creating a situation in which everyone believes that no system capable of stopping an incoming nuke can ever be built, we will create a situation in which no nuke will ever be fired in anger, since the absence of such a system does, in fact, create a situation in which all the warheads would get through. In this sense, for at least some of them to whom I have spoken, this extends the "shield" of MAD to minor powers, as well, since even a handful of, say, Iranian nukes inbound would be enough to dissuade even, say, the United States from resorting to the nuclear option in a future confrontation. To my mind, it's sort of like a hostage-taker holding a gun to his own head to hold an armed robber at bay, but people do come up with some peculiar notions on occasion. Sometimes they even work.

(3) Cost. Investing in a solid ABM system would be expensive as hell. Iron Dome works by engaging only the incoming missiles tracking says are likely to hit something important and/or kill people. A system designed to stop a massive, simultaneously launched, time-on-target nuclear missile attack would have to engage a lot more targets in a much shorter window, and it would have to have a very high probability of doing just that (successfully) before it could be considered an effective strategic defense. Some of the MAD proponents to whom I have spoken also invoke the expense argument as a moral argument against building an effective strategic defense. The logic goes that since only wealthy nations could afford them, it would leave poor nations exposed to far greater relative risk. This not only leaves them more threatened by their own neighbors but also makes them more vulnerable to nuclear coercion from someone who does have such a system.

There's probably some point (not necessarily a good ope) to the argument that an effective SDI would destabilize the balance of power (such as it is and what there is of it) by making the nation which possesses it much less vulnerable and therefore more likely to run the risk of a nuclear exchange to get what it wants on the international stage. In effect, that it would take us back to the (fleeting) point in time in which the US had a monopoly on atomic weapons. [sarcasm mode on] Given the wild abandon with which we employed them on all and sundry during that period, this is obviously an excellent argument. [sarcasm mode off] Frankly, I'd be a lot more concerned by the possibility of someone like Putin or our good friend in North Korea getting his hands on one than I would about the US, Great Britain, or France, but that's just my opinion.

As for the survivability of a nuclear war, that's something we're not supposed to talk about. Don't get me wrong --- I think any substantial nuclear exchange would be pretty damned cataclysmic, and the damage it would almost certainly inflict on the population and economic infrastructure of the countries involved would be terrible. I rather doubt, however, that it would be a lot more terrible than what Germany managed to do to itself during the religious wars of the 17th Century. It is part of our current mindset to discuss strategy as if any nuclear war would be an extinction-level event, and that's just plain silly. Casualty estimates for a nuclear exchange are a lot more nebulous than most laymen ever even suspect, and it isn't, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon one's perspective), something on which we have a great deal of empirical evidence. What we have are stacks and stacks of simulations and projections based on the only two atomic attacks in history and modeling for more powerful weapons, and models are only as good as their underlying assumptions. Again, a part of the reason for this is the deliberate, systematic (and not necessarily a bad thing) programming of public opinion to regard any nuclear exchange as a planetary kiss of death (or the next best thing to it) in order to dissuade anyone from ever supporting a nuclear attack. My only problems with it are that (1) I don't believe in false arguments, no matter how "noble" the end they purport to serve and (2) if the day ever comes that the programmers discover that the current crop of politicians is as capable of lemming-like behavior as Europe 100 years ago this month, the arguments against building any sort of SDI are going to mean that an awful lot of people are likely to die when they didn't have to. A system that successfully protects just LA and Chicago from nuclear obliteration would be worth every penny spent on it, after all.

Please don't use racial slurs.

namelessfly wrote:...rag head rocket...

When you are launching rockets intentionally into civilian population centers with the avowed intention of inflicting maximum civilian casualties, I will refer to you as a rag head or some other derogatory name whatever your race, ethnicity or religion.

The good news is that the deterrent effect of the Israeli response combined with the callousness with which the terrorists used Palestinians as human shields has inspired some introspection about their support for terrorists.

Donnachaidh wrote:Please don't use racial slurs.

namelessfly wrote:...rag head rocket...

namelessfly wrote:When you are launching rockets intentionally into civilian population centers with the avowed intention of inflicting maximum civilian casualties, I will refer to you as a rag head or some other derogatory name whatever your race, ethnicity or religion.

That is kind of like saying "I only use the N word to refer to certain types of black people." There are plenty of derogatory names that you can use that do not denegrate entire societies.

If you want to be accurate as well as dismissive, you could go with something like "muj," short for mujahedin or "those who struggle," from the same root as jihad. I think their struggle is with basic intelligence. See? I have insulted the people I wanted to insult and not the 70% of the culture who don't support them or the 15% who are actively against them.

They are more or less militant Wesbro Babtists. You wouldn't want somebody grouping you in with them, would you?

Thank you for the response. It is obvious that you have given some rather careful consideration to the nuclear war issue.


One aspect of the Honor Harrington universe that interests me is that Weber's descriptions of the synergistic effects of the various antimissile systems and passive defenses resemble how defensive systems a multilayered missile defense system would function and how passive defenses (sidewalls and armor analogous to bomb shelters) could augment the effectiveness of active defenses. Few of the people who argued against SDI had ever crunched the numbers on weapons effects verses the area of urban centers to calculate how many weapons would actually be needed to destroy the major urban areas and kill the inhabitants. IIRC my calculations correctly, it turns out that an attacker would need to deliver about 500, megaton yield weapons to as many different target atlas to destroy the 100 largest urban areas with a total population of about 50 million. If you put people in reasonably robust shelters, then the lethal area of the weapons is reduced by about 95% so an attacker would need to hit 10,000
target areas with as many weapons. Suddently, the overkill is gone.

Another aspect that the critics of SDI got wrong was failure to understand random distribution of missile intercepts. The common calculation was 10,000 missiles against a 99% effective missile defense that would result in 100 missiles getting through to destroy 100 cities. Aside from the misunderstanding about weapons effects and the improbability of not reserving most missiles for military targets such as missile silos, the attacker can't predict in advance which missiles will get intercepted. Even if they aim 100 missiles at each city, the probability that none of the missiles will reach any particular city will be about 37%. Some cities will get nuked only once while others will get nuked multiple times. The result is that about 1/3 of the major urban areas would not be damaged.

Of course a 99% effective missile defense seems improbable. However; if you factor in a boost phase intercept system, a midcourse intercept system and a terminal intercept that are only 2/3 effective, then you get an overall effectiveness of about 96%! A robust civil defense using the shelters that I described forces an attacker to employ surface bursts if they want to destroy bunkers. This has the effect of of limiting the area affected by thermal radiation, nuclear radiation and intermediate level overpressure. Even more importantly, forcing an attacker to use low altitude or surface bursts enables a defender to employ close in weapons systems such as the 30mm Goalkeeper Gatling gun.

IMHO, we are soon going to suffer a limited nuclear strike that will not destroy the US but make us regret not having defenses.

runsforcelery wrote:

namelessfly wrote:
The best countermeasure to nuclear weapons is the simple shovel.

With a shovel, a couple of doors and a few hours warning, you can build a simple trench shelter that will protect you from nuclear fallout, direct nuclear radiation and thermal radiation which can be the biggest killers.

With somewhat more sophisticated tools, railroad ties and more dirt, you can build a shelter very similar to a shelter that survived even though it was only 100 yards from ground zero at Hiroshima.

With a trackhoe and a moderately sophisticated steel fabrication shop, you can build a shelter similar in design to a underground fuel storage tank that will allow you to survive the detonation of a one megaton nuke 1/2 mile away. Large diameter concrete sewer pipe works well too.

Earth penetrating nukes with accurate guidance are effective against hardened bunkers. I offer the Pershing 2 missile as an example.

However; against a shelter that is more than two crater radi plus penetration depth deep, it is useless as long as the shelter is seld contained and has multiple exits.


The permormance of Israel's iron dome nukes the idea that antimissile systems are futile. Granted that a 1 km/s rag head rocket is easier to intercept than a 7 km/s ICBM RV, you can afford to build multiple, multimillion dollar interceptors to intercept the nuke.

We don't have a counter to nuclear weapons only because a bunch of imbeciles decided that MAD was the Holy Grail of deterrence. MAD men do stupid things such as accept Vladimir Putin's demand that we cancel the ABM radar in Poland and depend on Russia to provide us with early warning of an Iranian missile launch.

In this instance, I have to agree with Nameless about MAD. At the time it was initially proposed, it might have made sense. These days, it persists for (I think) three main (and very bad) reasons:

(1) It's been around so long that it has acquired the patina of "Everyone Knows" which is the reason most obsolete strategic concepts linger long past their "use-by" date.

(2) Some scientists (who shall remain nameless; no double entendre intended) publically endorsed the "nuclear winter" scenario/specter/bugaboo long after the assumptions and numbers which produced it had been debunked as highly questionable, at best. Their reasoning was that any nuclear war/use of nuclear weapons would be so terrible that any argument (be it ever so false) which would tend to prevent it from ever happening was valid even if its scientific basis was a crock. In a similar vein, some (I would argue many) of the present day proponents MAD believe that by creating a situation in which everyone believes that no system capable of stopping an incoming nuke can ever be built, we will create a situation in which no nuke will ever be fired in anger, since the absence of such a system does, in fact, create a situation in which all the warheads would get through. In this sense, for at least some of them to whom I have spoken, this extends the "shield" of MAD to minor powers, as well, since even a handful of, say, Iranian nukes inbound would be enough to dissuade even, say, the United States from resorting to the nuclear option in a future confrontation. To my mind, it's sort of like a hostage-taker holding a gun to his own head to hold an armed robber at bay, but people do come up with some peculiar notions on occasion. Sometimes they even work.

(3) Cost. Investing in a solid ABM system would be expensive as hell. Iron Dome works by engaging only the incoming missiles tracking says are likely to hit something important and/or kill people. A system designed to stop a massive, simultaneously launched, time-on-target nuclear missile attack would have to engage a lot more targets in a much shorter window, and it would have to have a very high probability of doing just that (successfully) before it could be considered an effective strategic defense. Some of the MAD proponents to whom I have spoken also invoke the expense argument as a moral argument against building an effective strategic defense. The logic goes that since only wealthy nations could afford them, it would leave poor nations exposed to far greater relative risk. This not only leaves them more threatened by their own neighbors but also makes them more vulnerable to nuclear coercion from someone who does have such a system.

There's probably some point (not necessarily a good ope) to the argument that an effective SDI would destabilize the balance of power (such as it is and what there is of it) by making the nation which possesses it much less vulnerable and therefore more likely to run the risk of a nuclear exchange to get what it wants on the international stage. In effect, that it would take us back to the (fleeting) point in time in which the US had a monopoly on atomic weapons. [sarcasm mode on] Given the wild abandon with which we employed them on all and sundry during that period, this is obviously an excellent argument. [sarcasm mode off] Frankly, I'd be a lot more concerned by the possibility of someone like Putin or our good friend in North Korea getting his hands on one than I would about the US, Great Britain, or France, but that's just my opinion.

As for the survivability of a nuclear war, that's something we're not supposed to talk about. Don't get me wrong --- I think any substantial nuclear exchange would be pretty damned cataclysmic, and the damage it would almost certainly inflict on the population and economic infrastructure of the countries involved would be terrible. I rather doubt, however, that it would be a lot more terrible than what Germany managed to do to itself during the religious wars of the 17th Century. It is part of our current mindset to discuss strategy as if any nuclear war would be an extinction-level event, and that's just plain silly. Casualty estimates for a nuclear exchange are a lot more nebulous than most laymen ever even suspect, and it isn't, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon one's perspective), something on which we have a great deal of empirical evidence. What we have are stacks and stacks of simulations and projections based on the only two atomic attacks in history and modeling for more powerful weapons, and models are only as good as their underlying assumptions. Again, a part of the reason for this is the deliberate, systematic (and not necessarily a bad thing) programming of public opinion to regard any nuclear exchange as a planetary kiss of death (or the next best thing to it) in order to dissuade anyone from ever supporting a nuclear attack. My only problems with it are that (1) I don't believe in false arguments, no matter how "noble" the end they purport to serve and (2) if the day ever comes that the programmers discover that the current crop of politicians is as capable of lemming-like behavior as Europe 100 years ago this month, the arguments against building any sort of SDI are going to mean that an awful lot of people are likely to die when they didn't have to. A system that successfully protects just LA and Chicago from nuclear obliteration would be worth every penny spent on it, after all.

namelessfly wrote:When you are launching rockets intentionally into civilian population centers with the avowed intention of inflicting maximum civilian casualties, I will refer to you as a rag head or some other derogatory name whatever your race, ethnicity or religion.

You can do that in your personal conversations elsewhere. You cannot do it here on the forums.