KEW for Charis

I would recommend you read the Rand Institutes study space based weapons, specifically on KEW's. They talk about the difference between KEW's and Meteors. The destructive type meteors your talking about start at 300 metric tons and scale upwards drastically. A man made KEW would be nowhere near that weight or mass.

Here's a link to the Rand Institutes study. It's a truly fascinating read.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 8740,d.cWc

As an example, the Barringer meteor crater in Arizona is a little over 1km wide and was caused by an iron meteor 15-20m in diameter with a mass between 18000 to 62000 metric tons.

There seem to be 2 main reasons given in the text for not exploiting 'higher level' tech in sneaky ways to sabotage the CoGA, which have not really been mentioned in this thread.

Firstly on Safehold anything mysterious and unexplainable will be in serious danger of immediately being labelled supernatural, at least for propaganda purposes, and if the EoC are getting supernatural aid it clearly must be from Shan-Wei. So such raids will give the CoGA an easy propaganda victory and tend to bolster their overall support and war effort. Not to be done unless the raid is truly strategic.

Secondly, for retaliation purposes, the raid must have been carried out by someone, and if there are no clear signs of how a Charisian force got in and out, then it must have been done or aided by locals, and the Inquisition will take savage reprisals. Merlin just isn't prepared to be the cause of such terrible suffering for innocent ordinary people around the attack site, and the leadership of the EoC agree with him 100%, so it's not going to happen. (If you've not got there yet, there is a very illustrative incident in LAMA, which is the result of a genuine accident.)

abrax894 wrote:I would recommend you read the Rand Institutes study space based weapons, specifically on KEW's. They talk about the difference between KEW's and Meteors. The destructive type meteors your talking about start at 300 metric tons and scale upwards drastically. A man made KEW would be nowhere near that weight or mass.

Here's a link to the Rand Institutes study. It's a truly fascinating read.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 8740,d.cWc

As an example, the Barringer meteor crater in Arizona is a little over 1km wide and was caused by an iron meteor 15-20m in diameter with a mass between 18000 to 62000 metric tons.

Many of us have read the Rand report, ages ago. The problem is that the Temple is strong enough that you would need the kinetic energy of a large meteor to get through it. We've been over this many times. You complained about people assuming that you were talking about nukes, but the post where David talks about nukes was in response to exactly the same kind of question you asked--it wasn't just about nukes, it was also responding to suggestions of using KEWs. His response applies to any attack on the temple strong enough to penetrate its defenses. A KEW powerful enough to get through the Temple armor would be the equivalent of dropping a nuke on Zion.

abrax894, in response to your more general question: Yes, you are correct that the Council and Merlin in particular are "unnecessarily" limiting their options. But this is a conscious and deliberate decision on their parts. There are many reasons for it. One is an extremely strong desire to injure innocents as little as possible. Another is the knowledge that their actions will be scrutinized and criticized in the future, in particular when the Truth comes out. And there is the need to encourage people to think for themselves, rather than give them a fait accompli.

From their point of view, limiting their options is necessary.

SWM wrote:And there is the need to encourage people to think for themselves, rather than give them a fait accompli.

Yep. Remember, it's not enough for just CHARIS to advance by leaps and bounds. The overall plan needs the other side to advance as well, for them to develop and cultivate their own free thinkers and inventors.

And that plan is not served by slapping down said thinkers and inventors with "supernatural" strikes every time they start getting somewhere.

Besides which, Charis has no need for ultratech cheats. They're already winning!

I suggested smuggling in a small nuke powerful enough to gut the inside but not so powerful that the shell of the temple couldn't contain it. But I became convinced that it was not a good idea because of the probable political and religious fallout along with the probability that the computer and other resources in the basement might be needed later on.

Don

Merlin has repeatedly stated he doesn't want to get anywhere close to the Temple in case Something Bad happens. He fears that it still has active sensors and could pick up obviously Terran Federation tech and activates some sort of contingency protocol. I'd imagine a nuclear device would be just as bad.

Note that Weber has USED the more precise sort of KEW strikes, in his Honorverse series (though that still destroyed a city block or so - thankfully civvies were mostly out of the radius).

The fact that Merlin thinks that a KEW will destroy much of the city implies just what others have said - that the battle steel on the temple would require a far bigger KEW. I'll trust Merlin (and through him, RFC) in this.

abrax894 wrote:It would be an aerodynamic, materially dense, finned projectile traveling at hypersonic speeds.

Sounds like a rock to me...

You clearly need to read some more hardcore scifi, I recommend David Webers Honor Harrington series, its great. Calling KEWs rocks is a pretty established slang/jargon; its especially used by marines. Especially amongst the enlisted. I am not positive they do it to annoy the space squids, but if I were a betting man I would place money on it.

All these responses and I've been away for a few days. Ok, to start, the reason I said a nuke or nuke like strike wouldn't be necessary is because you can accomplish the same goal with multiple smaller strikes focused on a small area. Now, would it be looked at as supernatural, probably, but, and this is more my opinion than anything, winning the way is by far the MOST important thing at this point. Simply put, history is written by the victor. If Clyntahn and his ilk aren't around to dispute, or, more likely, to make shit up as they go along to fit their goals (yes I said shit, as the stuff that comes out of that animals mouth cannot be described as anything else other than bovine excrement, and that is probably an insult to bovine excrement everywhere), you will have a FEW eye witnesses to contradict things, but the communication abilities of Safehold will limit that impact. Yes, there will be SOME collateral damage, and people will get hurt, but would that number be more or less than the people that are now dying from the machinations of Clyntahn and his Sword of Schular? My guess would be less. Again, this is more opinion now and RFC can do as he pleases as it's his story.

Let's see, reading more HARDCORE sci-fi, like DW's Honorverse. Well, I HAVE. Multiple times. As a matter of fact, you'll notice in his books, that the really MASSIVE KEW's that he references are actually multi-ton, single or multi-drive missiles fired from ships at C fractional speeds. Remember physics? F=MA. The destructive power of a KEW relates to it's mass and the speed it is traveling, hell, if you take a 20kg chunk of metal and accelerate it to, say .4C, you can get a multi-kiloton equivalent explosion. But we're not talking about those kinds of speeds, we're talking about a fraction of those speeds, a very SMALL fraction of those speeds.

We've already seen in the books on multiple occasions, that Merlin can overlook/over think things. Take the substitution of compressed air tools for electric tools for instance. It was kind of a DUH moment there.

Anyway, I've attempted to counter all the arguments thrown my way, even the ones that seem to be repeats/ignores my previous statements. Yes, I'm aware that the Battle Steel that is used in the Temple' construction makes it very tough. I've already stated that creating your KEW' with the same material would offset that to a degree. I've also agreed that it would set back the Inner Circles goals to a degree, however, since they haven't really made all that much progress in that regard anyway, I can't really see the harm. The only thing they have really done is expose Clyntahn to be the murdering, conniving, genocidal maniac that he is. Most of the people fighting him still believe heavily in God, they have simply come to the conclusion that the Church no longer represents Him. So again, what do you lose by demolishing the Temple in a 'Supernatural' display? You end the way, or at the very least take a massive step toward that end. You disorganize you're enemies, the nations fighting you lose a majority of it's cohesiveness AND, for all those that are still sitting on the fence, waiting to see who is going to come out on top, well, I think that may just be the tipping point, don't you?

After thinking about it, I can see many would think that multiple smaller hits would not accomplish the same or more than a single large one. If you are one of those, please reference tactical nukes vs strategic nukes. The US during the Cold Ware armed their ICBM's with MIRV's with 20-40KT range nukes with multiple warheads targeting larger structures/cities. The Russian went with the 'Bigger is Better' and designed their nukes to fit, ending with the larges known nuke ever created, 100+ megatons. On a more conventional scale, the US military currently has multiple weapons, mostly cruise missiles, that will deploy multiple smaller warheads over a target area equipped with significantly smaller antipersonnel or anti-armor warheads. Individually these warheads wouldn't be capable of destroying anything as far as armor goes, however together they can disable/destroy multiple armored vehicles, destroy or compromise hardened structures and so on and so forth.

Finally, not working in or near the Temple. Agreed, but he wouldn't be working near the Temple at all. He would be dropping these from LEO, accelerated with his skimmer or with another vehicle retrofitted with stealth capabilities. This was covered in one of my previous posts. Also covered in the same post is acknowledging they don't know if the Temple actually has an automated point defense. This was the other reason why I suggested that the KEW's be made of BS, it would make them more resistant to point defense weapons.