"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

WeirdlyWired wrote:On Obsolete Solly Ships. SpV p683. The basic doctrine of the SLN is dangerously flawed. it hasn't changed in over 150 years. Even brand new Solly construction is obsolete death traps in combat. Well against almost anybody except the Sollies.

Hence the endless war porn. "Smith, the natives are forming up again with their spears, time to give them another taste of the maxim." So thrilling and exciting, I can't wait for another episode.

WeirdlyWired wrote:
Torch certainly was recording bar codes. That's how they found out about the infiltration into The Ballroom. They investigated and the operative suicided. I'm sure Torch relayed that info to ... almost everyone.

Unfortunately, that is akin to saying that Tuplo, Missouri started fingerprinting suspects and checking drivers licenses over the last year or so, but no one else is.

Freed slaves are on thousands of other planets and have been liberated over the last 4-5 hundred years. The 10- 20 million which have arrived so far on Torch is a trickle compared to the Billions of former slaves and slave decendants out there.

But honestly, every major planet should record that info as part of routine identification. If nothing else, as was mentioned, the tatoo records the genome, which will identify genetic defects.

Theemile wrote:Unfortunately, that is akin to saying that Tuplo, Missouri started fingerprinting suspects and checking drivers licenses over the last year or so, but no one else is.

That really doesn't matter. There will be deep penetration agents on Beowulf whose family have spent the last 500 years establishing their bona fides.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:Unfortunately, that is akin to saying that Tuplo, Missouri started fingerprinting suspects and checking drivers licenses over the last year or so, but no one else is.

That really doesn't matter. There will be deep penetration agents on Beowulf whose family have spent the last 500 years establishing their bona fides.

Or even never left.

WeirdlyWired wrote:Or even never left.

Indeed. It's really unlikely all the sympathizers would have pulled up roots and left for Mesa.

Realistically I cannot think of a place that is more likely to be expected to deliver every bit of advanced tech you give plans for them directly to the MA than Beowulf. OK I'll agree if you were insane enough to hire a firm on Mesa to produce it for you is even more likely to deliver it directly to the MA, but that's the only exception.

It would be like the Masadan heresy on Grayson, which was kept alive by a small group of very well hidden and highly placed devotes despite multiple very destructive wars until the RMN fixed that for them.

Oh well guys thanks for the welcome! I said i was new to this forum, but im not new to forums! Meaning that i welcome forthcoming exchange of ideas but im familiar to forum feuds and fights centered in looking for arguments to dismiss the other ideas. I´m not interested in that at all (been there etc) so ill try to focus in what you think of the case im presenting you and in the case theres some confusion ill try to clear it.

The problem with that is that missiles can (and DO) maneuver, while autocannon shells cannot. They are purely ballistic Something like that MIGHT work the first time (personally, I doubt it), but as we saw with the Triple Ripple, it will be countered easily enough after the first use or two of it.

Frankly, the only time during a missile attack that autocannon would be useful is in the last few seconds before the nuke in the missiles lit off to activate the laserheads. That is the point where a missile's path is easily predictable, since it needs to settle down to release the laserheads. However, by that point, it's a bit too late to be firing autocannon.

Yes, missiles do maneuver you are right. But missiles HAVE to be launched in a vector, because they have to achieve an intercept to their target. What limits their maneuverability considerable herding them into a path.

Moreover, what we are seeing in the Honorverse is incredible amounts of missiles being fired coordinately. On a vector which needs to produce an intercept. Those missiles occupy a volume in space, and the beauty of using autocannon rounds that explode in shrapnell is that it would use exactly the same principle a counter missile uses. Predict the area in which the missiles are going to be, and instead of locking into them occupy the space with shrapnell. Since they´re ballistic, they don´t depend of fuel and can be fired as soon as a vector appears clear enough to have a chance of some success.

If we were talknig about conventional autocannon rounds, yes, they are useless but for the closest ranges since they need a direct hit.

The way I see it as well, is that if autocannon could be that effective, then why aren't the RMN, RHN, GSN, or any other "modern" navy still using them? The only reason the sollies still use them is because they just haven't gotten around to updating the ships that are a couple hundred years old. The fact that even the sollies are trying to upgrade them also tells me that as behind the times as they are, even THEY understand that autocannon aren't really worth keeping around.

As they were being employed, exactly. At least my understanding is that autocannon was a ship to ship weapong employed too in anti missile defence in the closest range. As such, the changes in weaponry have effectively made them obsolete as they were being employed (maybe they would be of some use against LACs but the Solies never had the chance to try).

In any case that´s not the use im proposing.

Edit to add: Shrapnel doesn't really give ANY advantage, as missiles are shielded above and below with wedges. Now, I suppose you could make an argument for directional shrapnel, such as that used in a Sidewinder missile, but again, there's a very narrow window through which it needs to go, and even the minutest jog on the part of the missile will generate a miss. Basically, what you're proposing is the "throw a bunch of ball bearings into the path of the missiles" idea of anti-missile warfare. Doesn't work that way. Space is huge, and you'd need a shit-ton of ball bearings/shrapnel to even get a single hit, let alone a way of taking out many missiles.

You are correct. But i would specify a little bit. Throw of exploding ball bearings into the path of missiles. Space is huge yes, but as stated incoming missiles need an intercept vector. After all, is what countermissiles do. Now if each of the balls explode in 1000 metallic fragments in a 360º sohere, adding to their inertia the explosion acceleration, i think we can agree you can occupy a sizable portion of the path of said missiles. Many of those fragments would be wasted into the sidewalls yes, but not all, since there would be incoming fragments from different rounds in 360º. And missiles are not armored, one impact would be enough, at those speeds, in all likehood, to produce a miss.That would be an efficiency win by far for the ball bearing.

There is also the minor detail that auto-cannon rounds don't self-destruct if they miss. That means that auto-cannon spread "hazards to navigation" throughout the volume of a battle with no way to clean things up.

Well yes, as i don´t know how many fragments of all fought battles in the honorverse are. Because i don´t think they recover every bit of blasted LAC or SD, and believe me they´re still moving unless something stopped them.

But they would clear up, same as other debris, because they would still move, and sooner or later they would either find something that stops them or leave the system. Same as any other debris.

I think you're selling the innovations short. Off the top of my head the anti-missile anti-LAC tech improvements (not just tactical doctrine) since Buttercup unleashed them are:
1) GSN Katana space superiority LAC (which you mentioned)
2) RMN Mk30 130,000gees CMs (Battle of Sidemore) improved enagement range against missiles
3) RMN Mk31 130,00o gees for an extra 15 seconds CMs even more improved engagent range (3+ million km vs ~1.5 million km with older CMs)
4) Keyhole - allowing vastly increased numbers of CM salvos (11 or so vs 3-4) (Oh and from both broadsides at once, doubling the anti-missile density per salvo)
5) The Viper anti-LAC missile (used by the aforementioned Katana)
6) Adapting CM launchers of modern units from DDs - SD(P)s to also fire the Viper giving them a devistating anti-LAC capability
6) Probably should throw in Bow/Stern walls making it even harder for missiles to get a clean shot at the ships
7) Improved free flying decoys (Lorelie)
8) RHN Triple-Ripple missiles (yes a tactical invocation, but one enabled by the specially designed missile warheads)
9) RHN LACs - designed primarily to blunt the offensive use of RMN/GSN LACs.

It is a good point, and i think i didn´t elaborate on it more before. I don´t mean that nothing has been done, and as you say i mentioned the Katana making an example of it. What i meant is not that theres been no attempts to address them, as you are proving. But they´re all based on the same vehicles so to speak: improvements related to known combat systems like the LACs or Vipers or the enhanced CM launch. LACs, missiles, sensors.

Theres no effort to find a new combat system that would modify the existing status quo. That´s what i meant by going back to the drawing board. The RMN did it when it developed the SD(P) and the LAC Carriers. They were new combat systems that wholly modified the status quo.

So I don't see where the GA has a need for desperate stop-gap measures to fend off missile swarms or LAC strikes. (Leaving aside that the SLN doesn't appear to have any way to use LACs offensively - nor are they likely to have LACs capable of threatening even old-style units except in vast numbers).
So the need for an AA escort seems lacking - at least for the good guys. Now maybe the League will try such a bodge - I'd bet against it working but I could see them desperate enough to try...

You´re are absolutely on point regarding that they don´t need desperate stop-gap measures. Their superiority as it is is massive enough.

But i didn´t mean it like a desperate move. I meant it like a meaningfull way in which they can deploy ships that are going to be an assest in a time in which they have NO CAPABILITY to deploy any other. Which means that if the idea has merit at all and achievable, the SDs are not a waste.

Furthermore, i also agree with you. Is the SLN the first one that should look into a way to change the status quo. But i don´t think its realistic to expect it, at least after the very efficient way in which David has described how utterly incompetent and bureacratic the SLN is. They have also adopted the strategy of raiding which lends them away from fleet to fleet tactical thinking. At this point im afraid that if a SLN flag officer appears try to do something constructive is going to feel not realistic at all.

One point not mentioned yet is why the autocannon was dropped from gthe offensive arsenal to begib with - stand off range. Lasers, with much lower cycle rates got out to further distances, faster than a bullet.

And with the advent of the laserhead, the auto cannon has no chance. Laser head stand off ranges are 30 to 50 thousand kilometers now. That is 3-4 planetary diameters at their closest approach. You just cannot get enough lead far enough out in time to stop them. And this is only self defense, not even the distances needed for mutual defense

The obvious counter to this argument is saturating the Space around the ship with shots (sandcasting) however, given that the average honorverse ship accelerates at over 300Gs, any cloud generated will quickly fall behind the ship, and any cloud of slugs dense enough to guarantee interception will block sensors and weapons.

The reason autocannon is not used anymore is well stated in your own reply. As ship to ship weapon, is utterly inferior to lasers. A ship doesn´t need to produce an intercept vector so to hit anything at long range with autocannon when the target can maneuver or roll is... well... utopical. I would keep a couple mind you for ground bombardment or orbitals destruction xDDD but as they were being used they´re obsolete.

But i need to point out that i am not proposing sandcasting (which has appeared in other works). Sandcasting would need to be close to the ship, and even if it keeps the inertia (not falling behind) it would require the defending ship to not alter acceleration so it doesnt get ahead or fall behind of its sand cloud. Im proposing honest to god FLAK fire, that can be send yes, to extreme ranges because once the missiles are committed to a vector they occupy a volume of space that you can try to occupy too with your own counterfire, and that path can be predicted in pretty much the same way a CM needs to predict it. And ball bearings do not need drives.

Maybe the most glaring point absent is what has been pointed out in other replys. "Possible but why bother?" Why, indeed, employ that effort to use what are clearly obsolete vessels?

Under normal circumstances, i agree with most of you: there is no point. The GA doesn´t need them and its techonologically way ahead of what those ships represent. What is worse, they´re building SD(P)s and we are talking about normal SDs that CAN´T be retrofitted into podnaughts.

So why do i come with this idea? Or better said why think in way in which those blasted Solie SDs would have an use?

Firstly, because in the present circumstances of the SEM i think that any way in which they can increase their numbers in a meaningfull way for the next year or two is an absolute need. All meaningfull shipyards are destroyed so no new units until the new shipyards are finished AND the then started ships get completed. That´s an awfull lot of time for a navy as stretched as the Star Empires.

Secondly, because as you can see usually in RFC works, the military race never stops. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you have to come up with the ideas and implement them yourself, otherwise is your enemies the ones that are going to use them against you and you won´t be able to counter it. An excellent historical example of how a weaker enemy seeks a way to challenge the status quo is the employement of armored units and doctrine by Germany in WWII... something that had been theorized by the british and the french and discarded because they didnt need them. Or Japan´s use of aircraft carriers.

Ideally the RMN would design a new paradigm ship from scratch, yes. But now they just can´t build it. This way they get something from those SDs, if achievable at all.

Thanks all sorry again for the lenght

Ideally the RMN would design a new paradigm ship from scratch, yes. But now they just can´t build it. This way they get something from those SDs, if achievable at all

You seem to have overlooked the fact that Haven still has intact shipyards and was out-producing SEM in ships before the SEM (& Grayson) yards were destroyed.

Added to that, the SEM R&D personnel are now at or on their way to Bolthole, where I am sure S&S will be coming up with all sorts of weird and/or wonderful ideas, which I am sure they will be able to turn into operational ships much quicker then the SLN or MA would have thought.

You seem to have overlooked the fact that Haven still has intact shipyards and was out-producing SEM in ships before the SEM (& Grayson) yards were destroyed.

Added to that, the SEM R&D personnel are now at or on their way to Bolthole, where I am sure S&S will be coming up with all sorts of weird and/or wonderful ideas, which I am sure they will be able to turn into operational ships much quicker then the SLN or MA would have thought.

Yes you are right. I did overlook to mention it. If Bolthole has the capacity to service the whole of SEM needs and Havens, and the political capital is there to do just that for their former enemies, then the point is moot.

I did think about it, but we just don´t know do we? Bolthole is a mistery, we know it churns out ships like no tomorrow, but have no specific facts about how much it can do.

I do look forward though to what the combination of Foraker and Hemphill may produce, i would really like for them to appear in the next installment dishing out outrageous concepts. Truth is, if the MA doesnt do something about it just the continuous effort in R&D in a place like Bolthole guarantees the GA superiority midterm.

Thanks for pointing out.

Talkregh wrote:Moreover, what we are seeing in the Honorverse is incredible amounts of missiles being fired coordinately. On a vector which needs to produce an intercept. Those missiles occupy a volume in space, and the beauty of using autocannon rounds that explode in shrapnell is that it would use exactly the same principle a counter missile uses. Predict the area in which the missiles are going to be, and instead of locking into them occupy the space with shrapnell. Since they´re ballistic, they don´t depend of fuel and can be fired as soon as a vector appears clear enough to have a chance of some success.

In theory, that is all accurate. However, some of the finer details of honorverse technology make autocannons simply impractical as missile defense. Remember that the standard distance at which a missile becomes uninterceptable (because its warhead detonates and the laser rods do their thing) is at somewhere around 20- to 30000 kilometers. In order to get an autocannon projectile on a heading where an intercept is even possible, the firing mechanism needs to be insanely accurate to a degree that seems pretty impossible given the mechanical stresses of firing a cannon.

If we were talknig about conventional autocannon rounds, yes, they are useless but for the closest ranges since they need a direct hit.

But even shrapnel rounds aren't that effective: The round needs to be large enough to contain enough shrapnel so that a given volume of space is filled with enough material to actually hit the missile. The missile body is very, very small, after all.

Autocannons used to work because missiles had to thread the needle between the top and bottom of the target's wedge ÄÄ8and penetrate the sidewall), which narrows the possible attack vectors by a considerable margin. The laserhead makes them pretty much useless.

As they were being employed, exactly. At least my understanding is that autocannon was a ship to ship weapong employed too in anti missile defence in the closest range.

I haven't read the Travis Long books, but I think that even then, autocannons were never considered to be anything but a CIWS for missile defence. By the time the solarians built their SDs, they definitely were not considered ship-to-ship weapons in anything but the strangest of circumstances.

As such, the changes in weaponry have effectively made them obsolete as they were being employed (maybe they would be of some use against LACs but the Solies never had the chance to try).

If missiles are already close to impossible to defeat using autocannons, LACs are much harder. After all, LACs actually do mount sidewalls.

You are correct. But i would specify a little bit. Throw of exploding ball bearings into the path of missiles. Space is huge yes, but as stated incoming missiles need an intercept vector. After all, is what countermissiles do.

Yes, but countermissiles can and do maneuver, and they are trying to get their impeller wedge into the target's impeller wedge, both of which are many orders of magnitude larger than any shrapnel field an autocannon can produce.

Now if each of the balls explode in 1000 metallic fragments in a 360º sohere, adding to their inertia the explosion acceleration, i think we can agree you can occupy a sizable portion of the path of said missiles.

No, you can't. The vast majority of your payload will be wasted, and unless you manage to basically get the AC shell to detonate somewhere within the missile's wedge envelope, it will be wasted entirely.

Many of those fragments would be wasted into the sidewalls yes, but not all, since there would be incoming fragments from different rounds in 360º. And missiles are not armored, one impact would be enough, at those speeds, in all likehood, to produce a miss.That would be an efficiency win by far for the ball bearing.

Except that the distances involved are so large that you literally can't produce a shrapnel field large enough to intercept even one, let alone a single pod's load worth of missiles before they can fire their laser heads. Any intercept generated will be entirely accidental.

Theres no effort to find a new combat system that would modify the existing status quo. That´s what i meant by going back to the drawing board. The RMN did it when it developed the SD(P) and the LAC Carriers. They were new combat systems that wholly modified the status quo.

By finding new applications for technologies that were previously relegated to obsolescence (SD(P)s only exist because pods became viable again due to advances in single-shot missile launchers, for example), yes.

Problem is, Autocannons are far too obsolete for this to work.

But i didn´t mean it like a desperate move. I meant it like a meaningfull way in which they can deploy ships that are going to be an assest in a time in which they have NO CAPABILITY to deploy any other. Which means that if the idea has merit at all and achievable, the SDs are not a waste.

The idea has no merit though. It's like asking whether or not the modern USN has any use for carronades on their aircraft carriers.

The reason autocannon is not used anymore is well stated in your own reply. As ship to ship weapon, is utterly inferior to lasers. A ship doesn´t need to produce an intercept vector so to hit anything at long range with autocannon when the target can maneuver or roll is... well... utopical. I would keep a couple mind you for ground bombardment or orbitals destruction xDDD but as they were being used they´re obsolete.

With the speeds involved, even minor course adjustments on the part of the missile will guarantee that the autocannon misses (and that's before we have to factor in recoil and all the other mechanical stresses autocannons have to compensate).

But i need to point out that i am not proposing sandcasting (which has appeared in other works). Sandcasting would need to be close to the ship, and even if it keeps the inertia (not falling behind) it would require the defending ship to not alter acceleration so it doesnt get ahead or fall behind of its sand cloud. Im proposing honest to god FLAK fire, that can be send yes, to extreme ranges because once the missiles are committed to a vector they occupy a volume of space that you can try to occupy too with your own counterfire, and that path can be predicted in pretty much the same way a CM needs to predict it. And ball bearings do not need drives.

In order to guarantee an intercept, you need to fill a volume of several thousand cubic kilometers with enough debris that you can hit a target with a cross section the size of an average SUV.

That's a lot of ball bearings, to put it mildly.

Firstly, because in the present circumstances of the SEM i think that any way in which they can increase their numbers in a meaningfull way for the next year or two is an absolute need. All meaningfull shipyards are destroyed so no new units until the new shipyards are finished AND the then started ships get completed. That´s an awfull lot of time for a navy as stretched as the Star Empires.

Counterargument: The major bottleneck for the RMN has historically been their inability to operate the hulls they could theoretically build. Right now, the RMN is stretched for personnel. Now, think a second about what is required for a deployment of these old ships: Coming up with somewhere around 2500 people per ship isn't trivial, especially given that each of those people will be more effective in whatever role they currently fill aboard an RMN or GA ship.

Yes, there's a period of vulnerability where the existing fleet will be overworked. But the tasks they do get are in themselves trivial to the point of being practically risk-free; there are very few scenarios where an SLN commander can bring a GA fleet into combat unless the GA fleet cooperates. Even then, chances are the GA fleet will be able to dictate the terms of the engagement.

Secondly, because as you can see usually in RFC works, the military race never stops. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you have to come up with the ideas and implement them yourself, otherwise is your enemies the ones that are going to use them against you and you won´t be able to counter it. An excellent historical example of how a weaker enemy seeks a way to challenge the status quo is the employement of armored units and doctrine by Germany in WWII... something that had been theorized by the british and the french and discarded because they didnt need them. Or Japan´s use of aircraft carriers.

To use an ahistorical example: Imagine you're the Royal Navy. For centuries, you have ruled the waves, other nations cowering before your might. Your dreadnoughts are the most terrible thing anyone has ever seen, and although they may not be exactly state of the art, the fact that you have so many of them and the crews and ressources to run them on patrols every day of every week makes you seem invinvible.

Then along come rumblings from oversees: In an inconceivable move, the americans have thrown out all their dreadnoughts, scrapped every single one of their support ships and cruisers, and have standardized on a few designs. Each of which being variations on the Zumwalt, with a gun that can comfortably shoot over the horizon and munitions that can even, impossibly, adjust their trajectory while in the air. They've also deployed something they call "cruise missiles", and are even claiming that they've installed observation platforms in low orbit that allow them to observe your every move. And if that wasn't enough, US planes have been observed flying way outside of what you would assume their operational range to be, why, it's almost as if those devils had somehow figured out a way to launch their planes off of their ships without having to mount floaters to make them recoverable.

That's the sort of technological disadvantage the SLN ships are currently operating at. For the GA to use the SLN SDs, in any capacity, is almost as preposterous a notion as it would be for the Royal Navy to propose using HMS Victory as an air defence vessel because its cannons are really good at shooting buckshot.

1) I do not recall where in the Honorverse autocannon were used to fight ship-to-ship. If there was a time, grazers and lasersreplaced them centuries before OBS because autocannon were not used in the Manticore Ascendant series as ship to ship weapons. Even now, warships seldom engage with cannons and never with autocannon. Autocannon is chiefly antimissile and to combat the modern equivalent of the WWII PT Boats: the fast attack boats.

2a) One mission kills a missile with energy transfer. Wedge-to-wedge fratricide is the best energy transfer. By exploding a 16# cannonball, one sends shrapnel, not just 360 degrees but 41253 deg^2. one is back to the first issue with laser head missiles ie more than half the available x-rays are blown away from the lasing rods. Solution: magnetic pinching bottles. Solution here is to make more of an artillery shell with the explosive mostly in the rear.
2b) Again you are down to transfer of energy. 1 16# steel shot would transfer a lot of energy. 1/.016th of that energy would be transferred by each piece of shrapnel that actually impacted a missile, and multiple hits per each exploding round, pretty rare. Of course, the explosive itself does multiply the velocity, therefore the KE transfer. And that is assuming your shrapnel gets past the particle shielding.
2c) That 20-50k range os not the range even dds get to in combat, that is the distance the Trebuchet fires its lasers to kill your ship. so how long does it take for your round of ~50mm autocannon shell to traverse that distance? Because it takes less than one seond from detonation to impact of that x-ray. That speed is magnetically induced unless you're still using chemical propellants, which see (3b). This Vi is something you need to address. Vi of laser fire = c = 299792458mps.

3) Available space. a) where are we to mount these miracles of obsolete technology, anti ship lasers,and AM laser cannons? Some logic would imply put the most effective and the most possible in the available space. Why, oh why, Does one lose 2 lasercannon for 3 autocannon? Makes no military sense. And(b) we have to sacrifice AM storage space for autocannon ammunition storage. Again, where is the logic?