BB(P/C) for rear area security

SWM wrote:Don't exaggerate. There is a big difference between battleships and cruisers, or between battleships and destroyers the size of cruisers.

I exaggerated to make the point obvious to anyone.

runsforcelery wrote:Frankly, I haven't made my mind entirely up, but I'm thinking the classic DD role/mission no longer applies and we'll be looking at simply deleting that class and going with a single cruiser niche below the Nike. I'm not saying that's the way things will happen, but the truth is that most of the DD/CL/CA screening roles for the battle fleet are nonstarters in an MDM/DDM universe. What is going to be needed is a platform that can be built in sufficient numbers to deploy everywhere you need it (which implies as cheap and small as possible) and yet remain survivable enough to do its job in peacetime and wartime alike (which implies not-cheap and not-small). As always, the designer's unenviable challenge will be to somehow reconcile those conflicting requirements.

What it means is you´re not getting away with a single class to cover it all. It´s simply too expensive to only build ships that can leap into any fight below the wall.

Also, comparing with real world wet navies is rather broken, because there, even a single 560t Nanushka missile corvette can easily destroy just about any ship below 15kt if the skipper is good. And even a 100kt supercarrier isn´t outside the scope of possibility, although heavy damage is a more likely result than sunk or destroyed.

Duckk wrote: Quoting David
The CLAC would remain a light-minute or so away from any anticipated danger,

The problem is that the search volume is actually on the order of 130 LM in radius. So you are in fact deep inside the volume that could well be infested with missile pods, graser torps and other such fun toys. Not to mention the threat that the MAN produces a sphere of spiders 2 LM in radius and waits for a customer to jump into their web.

Duckk wrote:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/289/1

If I were designing the RMN's "quick response" recon forces (which, by an odd coincidence, I am responsible for doing) they would be built around a small number of specifically tasked groups of destroyers and a single CLAC. They would be dispatched to the coordinates of any suspect datum, and once they reached those coordinates, they would be tasked to search a volume around them which would allow for a rate of advance by any incoming force which would be at least twice that of which I believe the attackers to actually be capable. They would deploy recon platforms in profusion and they would operate two shells of RDs: one working its way in from the outer perimeter of the sphere to be searched, and another working its way out from the center. The CLAC would remain a light-minute or so away from any anticipated danger, staying in contact via FTL com, and would be available to provide a massive launch of LACs if an opponent suitable for its engagement turned up. If, instead, an entire enemy Battle Fleet turned up, then Home Fleet would be on call to deal with it. And, in the meantime, I would not have invested billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping, and tens of thousands of personnel in a fleet of ships which had no other function but to run around, look for the enemy, and either run away very fast — or die — if they detect the enemy.

Riiight...

So, destroyers apparently remain in service.

Seriously though, what exactly is that CLAC achieving?
And how would battle fleet be on call when there is no such thing as truly long distance comms?
If you send out a CLAC then you do that to provide extra scouting assets, the LACs, otherwise you may as well just send the destroyers.
Anything the destroyers can´t handle, a single CLAC load of LACs probably can´t handle either. Or more precisely, why would an enemy send in anything within just that quite limited threat window?

And what happens if there´s lets say 12 translation echoes during a single day? You send out a CLAC for every one? It´s bad enough needing a few dozen DDs out and about for a few weeks, but how much of your capital fleet are you seriously going to send out in penny-packets?

What happens when the enemy has probed a few times and know how you´re going to deploy?
You add additional escorts for the CLAC to avoid it being jumped?
Because that´s definitely what i would do if an enemy is foolish enough to deploy BIG ships piecemeal like this.
Then it becomes WORTH the effort to deploy small fleets of my own just set up to trap and kill those CLACs, and if needed/possible, the DDs.

Simple option, have a ship translate down to cause an echo, have it deploy 4 spiderdrive drones equipped with hyper engines.
Once the investigation squadron arrives, the drones, unaffected by human limits on acceleration are already hard to predict where they are.
Once they have taken a good look at where the incoming ships are, 1 or several translate back to hyper and send the data.
A few minutes later, your REAL attack units translate down on top of the CLAC.

*BOOOM*

War of attrition is a great idea if you can make sure the only really loosing anything is the enemy.
Which is why you never ever deploy individual capital ships in such a vulnerable way.

Tenshinai wrote:Riiight...

So, destroyers apparently remain in service.

We should probably note that was from three years ago, while RFC suggesting the 'notional DD' is probably dead is from this year.

Thanks Duckk for refreshing our memories about what David actually said! Let's look at what he is actually saying.

I was mistaken in assigning these speculations to Manticoran R&D brains; they are in David's brain. But the principle is still the same--these are preliminary speculations on the necessary force deployment in a peacetime environment in which DDMs and MDMs are widely deployed. He doesn't specifically mention pirates (though he does mention rogue states). I would argue that ships on anti-piracy patrol in this speculative environment would have to be able to face DDM fire, because they might--unless you had very good intelligence that no one you might run into had DDMs. Anti-piracy patrols have to expect to face fire--why would you send out an anti-piracy patrol that would have to run away if the people it was after fired?

Reading David's statemens, note that he is not saying that the only ship below the wall will be the size of a Saganami C. (And I never said that either!) What he says is that in this future environment, the smallest ship which could fulfill the duties of a LIGHT CRUISER would probably be about the size of a Saganami C. Since Manticore labels ships according to their intended duties rather than their size, it would undoubtedly be called a light cruiser, too. So David is saying that all those duties you are talking about which are handled by light cruisers would be handled by this speculative ship, because that is the light cruiser in that threat environment. A ship doing patrol or commerce protection should be able to survive at least one broadside of a similarly armed ship--and in a potential DDM environment that requires something bigger than Manticore's current light cruisers.

David also says that the Destroyer might be eliminated as a class in the Manticoran force structure. Let's look at the changing role of the destroyer in the RMN, as described in House of Steel:

Destroyer missions generally fit into one of two major roles: screening the wall of battle and fulfilling independent missions such as commerce protection.
. . .
The evolution of small, high-endurance drones began to erode the destroyer's operational reconnaissance roles, as these drones were both faster and stealthier than any warship, in addition to being unmanned and therefore more expendable.
. . .
On the other side of the coin, the traditional roles of a destroyer as an independent cruising unit were being eroded slowly as the Navy built up its inventory of light cruisers, a type that had been traditionally underrepresented in the Manticoran order of battle. The new light cruisers were more powerful, better defended and had longer endurance than any destroyer in service, which made them far better suited to the roles of strategic reconnaissance picket forces, commerce protection, or commerce raiding. The advent of the advanced LAC in 1914 PD, followed by the evolution of LAC antimissile doctrine in the early 1920's, removed the destroyer's last vestiges of utility as a screening unit.

So, the roles of the destroyer in the Manticoran Navy are largely assumed by the light cruiser and the LAC. Unless you can come up with a convincing argument for a role which is better filled by a destroyer than a light cruiser (and David has apparently not come up with a convincing argument yet), there may be no need for a Manticoran destroyer--in this speculative future peacetime environment of widespread DDMs.

Tenshinai wrote:

SWM wrote:Don't exaggerate. There is a big difference between battleships and cruisers, or between battleships and destroyers the size of cruisers.

I exaggerated to make the point obvious to anyone.

No, you were making a straw man argument. And I called you on it. No one was talking about eliminating everything below the size of a battleship, or even replacing everything below the battleship with a single class.

Now, as for checking out potential hyper transits, a few points.

1) Obviously you would scale the size of the search zone (and safe distance from the search zone) according to the amount of lag between hypothetical transit and arrival of the search squadron.

2) The environment we are talking about is a peacetime environment. Dozens of staged transits obviously moves you out of a peacetime environment. Once you see that happening, you need a different response. That would be true whatever your usual peacetime response is. Don't try telling me that you would have enough small destroyers to handle that many staged transits. No matter what kind of response you normally have to potential transits, you cannot hope to track down that many. When you start getting all those transits, you go straight into a Case Zulu. So this is not a viable argument that CLAC and escort is a bad response for routine peacetime detection of potential transits.

3) As for an ambush of the response squadron, sure, an enemy could do that. But that would again be true regardless of the type of force you use to respond with. You could send out a couple squadrons of destroyers. Or you could send out hundreds of LACs and some light cruisers. Note that the light cruisers are only a little more expensive than destroyers and much better able to deal with an ambush. The CLAC would be fairly safe. Not completely safe, perhaps, but fairly safe. And if there is an ambush, you are back to Case Zulu. The detection grid and response force has multiple purposes
a) to reduce the threat of espionage and smuggling
b) to force an enemy to commit a larger force than he would like to use, [edit]or transit much, much, further out to avoid detection[/edit], thus providing deterrence
c) to provide a tripwire in case someone is actually willing to commit that force.

The response force is NOT necessarily supposed to defeat every possible invading force or ambush. If someone is willing to execute an ambush or a large invasion, no possible response force could be expected to survive. The response force is a balance between how much Manticore can commit for deterrence, and how much it is willing to risk to ambush. I argue (and David apparently agrees) that a small force with a CLAC some distance back from the search zone is an adequate balance of deterrence versus risk.

SWM wrote:TBut the principle is still the same--these are preliminary speculations on the necessary force deployment in a peacetime environment in which DDMs and MDMs are widely deployed. He doesn't specifically mention pirates (though he does mention rogue states). I would argue that ships on anti-piracy patrol in this speculative environment would have to be able to face DDM fire, because they might--unless you had very good intelligence that no one you might run into had DDMs. Anti-piracy patrols have to expect to face fire--why would you send out an anti-piracy

There's alwYs a risk of running into a better equipped than average pirate, or privateer, or mutinous naval unit. After all, as expensive as DDMs might be in this postwar future; they might be cost effective if the pirate or commerce raider knows they can punch out an escort or small system's Units from beyond the range those units can reply. Plus DDMs let them probe a suspected naval unit (that's pretending to be a merchie without having to stray all that deeply into its possible missile envelope.

SWM (cont) wrote:So, the roles of the destroyer in the Manticoran Navy are largely assumed by the light cruiser and the LAC. Unless you can come up with a convincing argument for a role which is better filled by a destroyer than a light cruiser (and David has apparently not come up with a convincing argument yet), there may be no need for a Manticoran destroyer--in this speculative future peacetime environment of widespread DDMs.

the other question is "how much more do the additional capabilities of the CL cost you?" Maybe with all the electronics, missiles, and defenses the cost for somewhat increased survivability and cruising endurance isn't proportionately so high..,
Or maybe you don't anticipate needing a huge number of hulls postwar; so somewhat more capable ones are worth the cost.

Which actually ties back into the SDM anti pirate unit - the cost savings only really make sense if you need so many hulls you have to compromise by building ones not even slightly capable of standing up to near peer navy units. (WWII convoy escort sloops or corvettes for example)

Your response unit need not beadequate to defeat an invasion force of spider drive ships. The response force need only run down the invaders or force them to reveal themselves by engaging the response force. Once this occurs, swarms of system defense missile pods launching Apollo MDMs guided by Keyhole2 platforms will take out the invaders.

The analogy is infantry with laser designators seeking out a tank force that is infiltrating a defending area. On itsown the infantry force is dead meat. When the infantry is backed up by 155 mm artillery firing laser guided projectiles or strike aircraft firing laser guided bombs or missiles, the tanks are toast.


How about a new ship type for such intercept role?

Consider a notional Rolland DD but enlarged to carry recon drones either external or internal?

The higher accelleration of the recon drones enables this DD to investigate a much larger volume of space than a CLAC load of LACs.

One other alternative is suggested by the simulation in Shadow of Saganami. An Apollo capable ship able to launch and control only a few Apollo pods with augmented sensors.

SWM wrote:Now, as for checking out potential hyper transits, a few points.

1) Obviously you would scale the size of the search zone (and safe distance from the search zone) according to the amount of lag between hypothetical transit and arrival of the search squadron.

2) The environment we are talking about is a peacetime environment. Dozens of staged transits obviously moves you out of a peacetime environment. Once you see that happening, you need a different response. That would be true whatever your usual peacetime response is. Don't try telling me that you would have enough small destroyers to handle that many staged transits. No matter what kind of response you normally have to potential transits, you cannot hope to track down that many. When you start getting all those transits, you go straight into a Case Zulu. So this is not a viable argument that CLAC and escort is a bad response for routine peacetime detection of potential transits.

3) As for an ambush of the response squadron, sure, an enemy could do that. But that would again be true regardless of the type of force you use to respond with. You could send out a couple squadrons of destroyers. Or you could send out hundreds of LACs and some light cruisers. Note that the light cruisers are only a little more expensive than destroyers and much better able to deal with an ambush. The CLAC would be fairly safe. Not completely safe, perhaps, but fairly safe. And if there is an ambush, you are back to Case Zulu. The detection grid and response force has multiple purposes
a) to reduce the threat of espionage and smuggling
b) to force an enemy to commit a larger force than he would like to use, [edit]or transit much, much, further out to avoid detection[/edit], thus providing deterrence
c) to provide a tripwire in case someone is actually willing to commit that force.

The response force is NOT necessarily supposed to defeat every possible invading force or ambush. If someone is willing to execute an ambush or a large invasion, no possible response force could be expected to survive. The response force is a balance between how much Manticore can commit for deterrence, and how much it is willing to risk to ambush. I argue (and David apparently agrees) that a small force with a CLAC some distance back from the search zone is an adequate balance of deterrence versus risk.

namelessfly wrote:Your response unit need not beadequate to defeat an invasion force of spider drive ships. The response force need only run down the invaders or force them to reveal themselves by engaging the response force. Once this occurs, swarms of system defense missile pods launching Apollo MDMs guided by Keyhole2 platforms will take out the invaders.

Screw that. Once I've bagged a CLAC I'm hypering out. You keep looking for me, I have to go set up another ambush. Oh, and I've got a better hyperdrive then you have, so good luck chasing me.