Apollo defense possibilities

Apollo control missiles confer multiple advantages to their attack missiles, many of them even with light speed communication with the launching ship. As such, any means to eliminate them as early as possible in their flights would be highly desirable.

Assuming the SLN eventually figures out that there is an Apollo Control Missile (ACM) following along in the impeller shadow of the clusters of missiles inbound, it should be possible to at least attempt to knock them out. Whether or not it would be sufficiently effective to be worth it is an interesting question that I thought I'd throw out for Barflies to chew over. None of these options are "good", but might be "good enough" to be worth it depending on how effective they are.

Even so, there are tactical situations where you have nothing to lose. If your missiles are about to be destroyed in their magazines, might as well use them in the CM role.

Attacking the ACM far enough out to make a big dent in the effectiveness of their shipkillers requires missiles with range far exceeding existing CMs. I see four possibilities:
1) A new CM
2) LACs or other platforms pushing out far enough to launch existing CM
3) Shipkillers used in the counter-ACM role.
4) A Mistletoe variant that can get out there fast enough to attempt to target the ACM.

All three of these will suffer as range from the launcher increases, but I foresee some potential countervailing factors:
1) The ACM is most likely to be nearly directly behind one of its shipkillers in order to stay in the impeller shadow.
2) The ACM is unlikely to be maneuvering to the same extent as shipkiller might, especially farther out.

If the ACM can be localized I see a few potential means of attack:
1) There is likely to be sufficient room to squeeze in between shipkillers with at least a chance of hitting the ACM.
2) If you can get on the flanks of the entire salvo you might have a shot at the ACMs on the outer edges.
3) If LACs can be targeted by MDMs using "overs", then it might work against an ACM as well.
4) If you get the shipkiller in front of the ACM you might stand a chance of getting the ACM as well.

Positioning platforms on the flanks and sufficiently far out on the threat axis might aid in localizing the ACMs for attack.

Whether or not trading an MDM for an ACM is worth it depends on how much you degrade the 8 shipkillers who lost their ACM. A lot of that probably depends on how far out you manage to kill the ACM. If you are willing to use MDMs in the first place there isnt much reason not to use their range. The newest missiles available to the SLN have (IIRC) 13 mill km range. If you can kill an ACM at that far out, how badly will that hurt the orphaned shipkillers?

Another possibility is to force the attacking salvo to use their jammers that far out so they arent available for the final attack run, or force a higher percentage of the salvo to be EW platforms to compensate.

Interesting thought - but isn't the lack of powered envelope for the defence missiles going to be the biggest challenge? The SLN doesn't really have any MDM's yet - the Technodyne variants were somewhat cobbled together I recall. And by the time the Apollo missiles are in range of the SLN missiles, they are going to be travelling at a fair old clip - which will make any targetting solution a bit haphazard.

Now I agree your point that if you are going to be hammered anyway, you might use some of your CMs just in a 'last ditch' attempt, but I think unless the defence forces have serious MDM and pod capabilities of their own, it will only delay the inevitable

[quote="ericth"]Apollo control missiles confer multiple advantages to their attack missiles, many of them even with light speed communication with the launching ship. As such, any means to eliminate them as early as possible in their flights would be highly desirable]Certainly if you can eliminate the Apollo control missile (ACM) it would be very beneficial to do so.

I actually had another related thought, which would be a 'soft-kill' solution. Unfortunately about the only people with the tech to be likely to pull it off are the Manties.

But the FTL transcievers in the Apollo control missiles seem much more limited in effective range than those in recon drones and I assume that's due to their smaller size. If you could position a powerful FTL transmitter between the ACM and the controlling ship you could probably generate enough FTL ripple "noise" to somewhat jam the control link. (Degrade the signal enough to shrink the already limited range an ACM can be FTL controlled over).

Of course something that far out broadcasting FTL "noise" is likely to be a pretty high priority target. (Although with decent shielding to limit backscatter you could target the jammer back towards your own fleet to only screw up the ACMs receivers, leaving it fairly free to transmit FTL back to the Keyhole II. That would be less effective than if you could jam both halves of the link, but it's make you harder for the enemy's wall to localize and target.


But about the only people would could build a remote platform powerful enough, and with a high bandrate jammer, are the Manties. And they're not interested in jamming their own missile fire


(But that's predicated on the missiles being control directly from your opponents wall. It'd be harder to pull off jamming against a Moriarty system defense setup because all the Moriarty nodes can act as repeaters for FTL fire-control so they might well be closer than an enemy SD(P) would be, or there might be multiple within range at quite different bearings, making it harder to jam because they can hand off to an un-jammed repeater)

ericth wrote: any means to eliminate them as early as possible in their flights would be highly desirable.

Assuming the SLN eventually figures out that there is an Apollo Control Missile (ACM) following along

SLN has the tactical recordings.

Missile wedges are impossible to miss. Even to Sollies.

Now the slight twist on the question is: Will the SLN figure out that following missile wedge is a control missile?

As for "attacking" said missile see multiple threads before on the subject.

It comes down to this: By the time you take out the ACM, even at extreme range of your CM envelope, the ACM has already done its job.

Frankly, until the SLN has a true MDM of its own, destroying the Apollo missile isn't going to do much more than delay the inevitable. Remove Apollo from the equation, and the SLN is still in much the same position as the PN was when 8th Fleet rolled into Barnett. They've got the Cataphracts, which would give them a range advantage over the PN, but I suspect that even with Aegis and Halo their EW and point defence capabilities are still inferior to what the PN was using at the end of the first war.

Apollo was needed to change the rules of the game against the RHN, a peer enemy with its own MDMs, SD(P)s, CLACs and a viable missile defence doctrine against MDMs. The SLN doesn't have any of those things.

Hi Ericth,

This has been brought up before, and RFC has shot it down for several reasons, you might want to check the pearls or FAQ to see if it was singled out for reference there.

Essentially the ACM is in the shadow of the 8 in front and even the RHN with better sensors didn't see them at Lovat and BoMA, so expecting the SLN to do so at this time isn't in the cards.

Part of the problem is the light speed reaction time of your SDM and especially MDM's, getting out on the flanks of the incoming wave is one thing having the sensor discrimination, fire control resolution and missile based AI to understand what their seeing then react is too much for the SLN to accomplish in their very limited time left.

J6P suggested the SLN had recordings of the Apollo, I don't think that's the case; they have HH's dialog with Filareta, but no useful tactical information, as indicated by no one at the SLN's HQ noticing it, when our intrepid heroes there are specifically looking for such manty tech.

So the SLN still doesn't know about Apollo because HA-H didn't tell them, since as Thiesman pointed out Filareta would have thought she was lying, bluffing or bragging, thus defeating her whole intended purpose to get him to surrender peacefully.

Dafmeister is spot on regarding Apollo being critical to address the RHN's numerical superiority in the second war, and that the vulnerabilities of the SLN despite its numbers isn't as immediately threatening to the SEM or the GA as Shannon's new RHN was to Manticore.

L

ericth wrote:Apollo control missiles confer multiple advantages to their attack missiles, many of them even with light speed communication with the launching ship. As such, any means to eliminate them as early as possible in their flights would be highly desirable.

Assuming the SLN eventually figures out that there is an Apollo Control Missile (ACM) following along in the impeller shadow of the clusters of missiles inbound, it should be possible to at least attempt to knock them out. Whether or not it would be sufficiently effective to be worth it is an interesting question that I thought I'd throw out for Barflies to chew over. None of these options are "good", but might be "good enough" to be worth it depending on how effective they are.

Even so, there are tactical situations where you have nothing to lose. If your missiles are about to be destroyed in their magazines, might as well use them in the CM role.

Attacking the ACM far enough out to make a big dent in the effectiveness of their shipkillers requires missiles with range far exceeding existing CMs. I see four possibilities:
1) A new CM
2) LACs or other platforms pushing out far enough to launch existing CM
3) Shipkillers used in the counter-ACM role.
4) A Mistletoe variant that can get out there fast enough to attempt to target the ACM.

All three of these will suffer as range from the launcher increases, but I foresee some potential countervailing factors:
1) The ACM is most likely to be nearly directly behind one of its shipkillers in order to stay in the impeller shadow.
2) The ACM is unlikely to be maneuvering to the same extent as shipkiller might, especially farther out.

If the ACM can be localized I see a few potential means of attack:
1) There is likely to be sufficient room to squeeze in between shipkillers with at least a chance of hitting the ACM.
2) If you can get on the flanks of the entire salvo you might have a shot at the ACMs on the outer edges.
3) If LACs can be targeted by MDMs using "overs", then it might work against an ACM as well.
4) If you get the shipkiller in front of the ACM you might stand a chance of getting the ACM as well.

Positioning platforms on the flanks and sufficiently far out on the threat axis might aid in localizing the ACMs for attack.

Whether or not trading an MDM for an ACM is worth it depends on how much you degrade the 8 shipkillers who lost their ACM. A lot of that probably depends on how far out you manage to kill the ACM. If you are willing to use MDMs in the first place there isnt much reason not to use their range. The newest missiles available to the SLN have (IIRC) 13 mill km range. If you can kill an ACM at that far out, how badly will that hurt the orphaned shipkillers?

Another possibility is to force the attacking salvo to use their jammers that far out so they arent available for the final attack run, or force a higher percentage of the salvo to be EW platforms to compensate.

SLN has tactical readout recordings of Spindle.

We can infer they have BOMA2 as well. Otherwise the mandarins wouldn't have been wondering why the Hell he did not surrender rather choosing to fire instead in a hopeless situation.

J6P wrote:SLN has tactical readout recordings of Spindle.

We can infer they have BOMA2 as well. Otherwise the mandarins wouldn't have been wondering why the Hell he did not surrender rather choosing to fire instead in a hopeless situation.

We know the SLN has data on Spindle because Gold Peak deliberately sent the senior surviving officer back to Old Earth with that data to demonstrate the folly of picking a fight with the RMN. So far as we know, nothing similar happened after Second Manticore - none of Eleventh Fleet's ships escaped or were let go, the dispatch boat that was supposed to summon Admiral Tsang's task force through the Junction left before the shooting started, and Tsang never left Sigma Draconis.

All the information the Mandarins have comes from Manticoran sources. I suspect it's data from the captured SLN ships rather than from the GA's sensors, to avoid showing just how much better GA hardware is. If all the information came from SLN sources, all of which were placed ahead of the missile salvos, it's unlikely that the Apollo missiles were visible through the wedge 'gunsmoke' of the attack missiles they were guiding, and that's without even considering what the Dazzlers and Dragons' Teeth would do to SLN sensor effectiveness. Let's also remember that the GA had access to all the data they were going to send, they could have chosen to send data only from ships that didn't get a good look at the incoming missiles.

Remember, the whole point of sending the data to the Mandarins and, I believe, releasing it to the League's media, was to demonstrate that Eleventh Fleet opened the engagement and the GA responded.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Ericth,
Essentially the ACM is in the shadow of the 8 in front and even the RHN with better sensors didn't see them at Lovat and BoMA, so expecting the SLN to do so at this time isn't in the cards.

They remarked on the odd pattern when they were first used, but there wasn't any indication they detected the control missile directly. Iirc, they inferred that it it had to exist.

Dafmeister wrote:We know the SLN has data on Spindle because Gold Peak deliberately sent the senior surviving officer back to Old Earth with that data to demonstrate the folly of picking a fight with the RMN. So far as we know, nothing similar happened after Second Manticore - none of Eleventh Fleet's ships escaped or were let go, the dispatch boat that was supposed to summon Admiral Tsang's task force through the Junction left before the shooting started, and Tsang never left Sigma Draconis.

All the information the Mandarins have comes from Manticoran sources. I suspect it's data from the captured SLN ships rather than from the GA's sensors, to avoid showing just how much better GA hardware is. If all the information came from SLN sources, all of which were placed ahead of the missile salvos, it's unlikely that the Apollo missiles were visible through the wedge 'gunsmoke' of the attack missiles they were guiding, and that's without even considering what the Dazzlers and Dragons' Teeth would do to SLN sensor effectiveness. Let's also remember that the GA had access to all the data they were going to send, they could have chosen to send data only from ships that didn't get a good look at the incoming missiles.

Remember, the whole point of sending the data to the Mandarins and, I believe, releasing it to the League's media, was to demonstrate that Eleventh Fleet opened the engagement and the GA responded.

And the Spindle data might be extra misleading because the Apollo missiles were "clumping" but Mike wasn't able to use them in FTL control mode (didn't have any keyhole II ships) so they were used in light-speed link mode.

So the SLN didn't see the devastating improvement in long range fire control that a proper Apollo setup gives.