Sprint drive

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:I'm not sure recon drones are significantly bigger than Mk23s. In mass like 50% IIRC.

As I said before, a drone's not a drone. We're still thinking 1905 drones with a ~300K boat bay launched device, with a destroyer only having 4-8. Manticore has a gamut of drones now, from Hermes buoys and the small inner shell defense drones to the huge system monitoring drones placed at the hyperlimit. We can't just say "drone" because there are a selection of different sizes available.

The Ghost Rider recon drones still seem to be about that size. They're still floated out of the boat bay. Newer designs seem to carry a few more of them, but there's no real way to know if that's because the drone got significantly smaller or if in response to their improved endurance and usefullness larger drone hangers were build into new classes in order to allow some to be detached for longer endurance observations.

Their microfusion plant + fuel to match the endurance of the old capacitor powered RDs is probably significantly more compact. But those old RDs seemed to have pretty short endurance -- more trying to fly past an enemy fleet and get a snapshot rather than trying to match vectors and shadow it. I'd guess that most of that freed space went right back into larger fuel tanks for vastly increased endurance.

Of course if you were customizing that new RD tech to build a missile launch platform you could strip out extra fuel, a lot of the sensors, etc, etc. I still think it would be too big and costly to be worth it though.

Jonathan_S wrote:Of course if you were customizing that new RD tech to build a missile launch platform you could strip out extra fuel, a lot of the sensors, etc, etc. I still think it would be too big and costly to be worth it though.

It wouldn't be used for a wall-of-battle missile. I'm thinking of a raiding missile. I don't think even Haven could have dealt with the strategy I proposed.

Theemile wrote:
kzt wrote:
I'm not sure recon drones are significantly bigger than Mk23s. In mass like 50% IIRC.


As I said before, a drone's not a drone. We're still thinking 1905 drones with a ~300K boat bay launched device, with a destroyer only having 4-8. Manticore has a gamut of drones now, from Hermes buoys and the small inner shell defense drones to the huge system monitoring drones placed at the hyperlimit. We can't just say "drone" because there are a selection of different sizes available.

The Ghost Rider recon drones still seem to be about that size. They're still floated out of the boat bay. Newer designs seem to carry a few more of them, but there's no real way to know if that's because the drone got significantly smaller or if in response to their improved endurance and usefullness larger drone hangers were build into new classes in order to allow some to be detached for longer endurance observations.

Their microfusion plant + fuel to match the endurance of the old capacitor powered RDs is probably significantly more compact. But those old RDs seemed to have pretty short endurance -- more trying to fly past an enemy fleet and get a snapshot rather than trying to match vectors and shadow it. I'd guess that most of that freed space went right back into larger fuel tanks for vastly increased endurance.

Of course if you were customizing that new RD tech to build a missile launch platform you could strip out extra fuel, a lot of the sensors, etc, etc. I still think it would be too big and costly to be worth it though.

A question would be, how close can you get with the stealth tec of a drohne to an enemy. If you can reach the border of the enemy defense line, than you need only one or more warheads with a counter missle drive to deliver the warheads and a counter missle drive is much smaller than a real missle drive. Maybe you have also some space for electronic warfare on the drohne to support the warheads and you would get an useble weapon.

Problem is, that a drohne is big and slow, so if the stealth doesn´t work or doesn´t work the whole way, it would be easy to destroy them.

I suppose you could take a Recon Drone and exchange a laser head for much of the sensor and other gear that make up part of the normal payload. Not sure if one would fit but perhaps something the size of a CA warhead the one on a Mk 23's warhead is too big.

Essentialy would would be creating a steath weapon that you would drop into a situation to sneak up through a target's sensor nets and hit something- probably unshielded like a station- though you would need to keep enough of the drone's equipment to 1) find it's way to target while avoiding defenses and 2) let your launching ship know what was going on. That includes comming to the best orientation to the target to do maximum damage.

A Ghost Rider drone slipping in on a SL (probably FF) logistics and repair station should be able to totally able to do that since we have seen them cozy up to SLN capital ships with active military tactical sensors going in a combat situation. You creep in, set up a point blank range of the (or a) fusion powerplant on the station and just pop the laseing rods out and go Boom. Breaching the containment of the stations reactor is going to do quite nicely. The drone itself (and the laseing rods) is going to vaporize when the warhead goes off. Any other sensors relativly near the station will probably register the two stage explosion but they won't be able to know where it came from. So far we have not had any information that the SLN or anybody else can track a GR.
This would be a very simplistic stealthed attack. If they can't see it comming, they have a really hard time defending against it. You might have to use two drones, one do deliver the warhead and one to be a full up GR using FTL to pass tactical data and let it's partner navigate to the detonation point as well as provide real-time tactical info to the launch ship.

If your good enough, you might really drive the SLN nuts by parking something like this relative to normal departure lanes for SLN warships in a system and take it stright down the throat of an warship just starting to move under impellers and gut the ship through the bow.
Depends on having a target that was worth the effort and need to get at.
More spooky invisable weapons----improvised with off-the-shelf equipment. Expensive, but you have to look at the cost vs return and the impact on your enemy. Kind of like Oyster Bay forcing Manticore and Grayson to shift to full shields, full time for their stations and slips.

Brigade XO wrote:I suppose you could take a Recon Drone and exchange a laser head for much of the sensor and other gear that make up part of the normal payload. Not sure if one would fit but perhaps something the size of a CA warhead the one on a Mk 23's warhead is too big.

We've already seen this, several books ago -- it's the Mistletoe system Honor uses in At All Costs. Laser heads on recon drones. We don't know what warhead size it is because it was used against missile pods -- any size laser head would kill any missile pod it hit.

Have we seen Mistletoe in action since? I can't recall any episodes; maybe the Manties are not using it against the Solarians because they don't need that kind of distant strike ability, not being afraid of Sollie missle volleys. (yet). They certainly could have used it -- we've had plenty of examples of Manty recon drones dancing around Sollie ships at very short ranges, and the Sollies being unable to lock them on at all. Mistletoe could have been used.

Or maybe the Mistletoe drones are only carried on SDs (maybe even only Apollo SDs - did Honor's BCs launch any of these)? Not really enough data to say.

tonyz wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I suppose you could take a Recon Drone and exchange a laser head for much of the sensor and other gear that make up part of the normal payload. Not sure if one would fit but perhaps something the size of a CA warhead the one on a Mk 23's warhead is too big.

We've already seen this, several books ago -- it's the Mistletoe system Honor uses in At All Costs. Laser heads on recon drones. We don't know what warhead size it is because it was used against missile pods -- any size laser head would kill any missile pod it hit.

Have we seen Mistletoe in action since? I can't recall any episodes; maybe the Manties are not using it against the Solarians because they don't need that kind of distant strike ability, not being afraid of Sollie missle volleys. (yet). They certainly could have used it -- we've had plenty of examples of Manty recon drones dancing around Sollie ships at very short ranges, and the Sollies being unable to lock them on at all. Mistletoe could have been used.

Or maybe the Mistletoe drones are only carried on SDs (maybe even only Apollo SDs - did Honor's BCs launch any of these)? Not really enough data to say.

The only case of Mistletoe being used so far is when Honor took out that Republican fleet at Lovat...

Don

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