Long term consequences of the League's collapse

I think you vastly overestimate who may be able to produce even streak drives much less spider drives for the foreseeable future.

Even with Dr Simoes contributing to the theoretical side, and the greatest hyperphysics establishments in human space (Manticore & Beowulf) assisting, you are probably looking at minimum two years to a functioning GA streak dispatch boat, three years to a warship. In the meantime, that project will be as black as anything ever worked on in Gram or Ghost Rider. After all, they might improve it, or spin off something entirely new.

No one who doesn't have help from MAlign or the yet to be formed GA-Simoes project is going to be developing this from the mere suspicious rumors out of Manticore. Recall that the human applied hyperphysics community HAS been working on breaking the Theta wall...for 4+ centuries without success.

Simoes can't help with the spider, beyond the most vague concepts. David has told us that MAlign compartmentization was tight enough to assure that he has virtually no useful knowledge of it. So the GA is starting from mere scientific suspicions on that one, without even the benefit of general scientific establishment preliminary work on the concept. It is entirely likely that they may not even hit on the right concept for that drive in three years, unless they get some more hard evidence/data. And this whole project will be deep black as well.

I deeply doubt, from what David has told us in Pearls and text and forum, if there is any scientific community in human space, outside the MAlign and Manticore/Beowulf-led GA, that has a prayer of parallel developing the spider. Among the first obstacles, no one except small circles in those polities is even aware of the rumors of it, much less believe it exists. It is re-discovering it, in truth, also, because you can't 'reverse engineer' something that you only have an inferred notion must exist - it would be like a deaf man 'reverse engineering' a saxophone from a single sign-language descussion of the music it makes.

I don't actually think that the GA will come up with exactly the spider, until they have some captured tech, at least bits and pieces of it. I think the focused effort on the mystery might result in some other new twists to drive and hyperphysics, however. Maybe with practical applications in 3-5+ years even.

Let's recall that Gram/Ghost Rider took, what, forty years?

dreamrider

BobfromSydney wrote:I agree, the GA should not be offering military technology (maybe export level versions of smaller/mid sized ships (and LACs or even module-constructed fortresses) to anyone outside of the alliance.

They most certainly should share military tech! Not indiscriminately, but to treaty partners that prove somewhat trustworthy. I've referred to export versions as "Manicore Light" -- which is roughly what Erewhon is selling to Maya; better than Solarian, but two or three generations behind the RMN.

Sharing Tech allows the treaty partners to take over anti-pirate and mutual defense burdens and lets the GA withdraw to a distance.

BobfromSydney wrote:A sudden and uneven shift in the galactic arms mix combined with dissolution of the league would be a big recipe for instability and war.

Manticoran Tech is going to spread no matter what Manticore and the GA do to prevent it. Sharing the tech allows some control over how and how fast that arms mix changes. caefeful selection of who the tech gets shared with will also help control what that tech gets used for.

BobfromSydney wrote:I think that post SL states would value three things above all:
1. Security
2. Access to Trade (Markets)
3. Access to Technology

In general I think everything else can be satisfied internally since each state has access to the 'resources' of an entire star system.

Sharing military tech satisfies two of your three points if done wisely. Sharing export tech -- LACs, system defense pods, FTL Comm, etc -- allows a system to manage its own security. Sharing export licensing -- the plans to build their own military hardware -- give a system access to advanced technology.

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:There are considerable military and civilian ramifications and applications for the drives.

There are?

The only civilian use that makes economic sense -- and not much of that -- would be for News agencies to build a fleet of Streak Drive couriers. A very few luxury liners might invest in Streak Drives for very high-end travel for the rich and famous.

Other than that, I can't see much civilian application for either drive and none for the Spider Drive.

Zakharra wrote:The GA cannot just pounce on anyone that develops it and realistically it would be extremely stupid for the GA to try and demand access to the R&D that developed it to verify if it was MAlign tech. Especially if it looks like Manticore/GA is moving in just as a polity is getting some military technology that looks like it will start equalizing the military situation.

I doubt that Manticore or the GA would be anywhere near that crude and inept. If they want to know where the tech originated, they will ask Anton and Victor to find out for them -- assuming regular espionage assets can't turn up enough information.

Merchant ships with the streak drives. they'd be able to haul cargoes faster than regular merchies. This means they can get a cargo to the target market faster, it could lower insurance and the cost of shipping, or there could be smaller merchantmen that specialize in speedy delivery (interstellar UPS?). With merchants, you don't necessarily need to have the most cargo of a certain type, you just need to get there before the rest of your competitors.

I think the successor states will be paying a lot closer attention to security and such, so that might be harder.

dreamrider wrote:I think you vastly overestimate who may be able to produce even streak drives much less spider drives for the foreseeable future.

Even with Dr Simoes contributing to the theoretical side, and the greatest hyperphysics establishments in human space (Manticore & Beowulf) assisting, you are probably looking at minimum two years to a functioning GA streak dispatch boat, three years to a warship. In the meantime, that project will be as black as anything ever worked on in Gram or Ghost Rider. After all, they might improve it, or spin off something entirely new.

No one who doesn't have help from MAlign or the yet to be formed GA-Simoes project is going to be developing this from the mere suspicious rumors out of Manticore. Recall that the human applied hyperphysics community HAS been working on breaking the Theta wall...for 4+ centuries without success.

Simoes can't help with the spider, beyond the most vague concepts. David has told us that MAlign compartmentization was tight enough to assure that he has virtually no useful knowledge of it. So the GA is starting from mere scientific suspicions on that one, without even the benefit of general scientific establishment preliminary work on the concept. It is entirely likely that they may not even hit on the right concept for that drive in three years, unless they get some more hard evidence/data. And this whole project will be deep black as well.

I deeply doubt, from what David has told us in Pearls and text and forum, if there is any scientific community in human space, outside the MAlign and Manticore/Beowulf-led GA, that has a prayer of parallel developing the spider. Among the first obstacles, no one except small circles in those polities is even aware of the rumors of it, much less believe it exists. It is re-discovering it, in truth, also, because you can't 'reverse engineer' something that you only have an inferred notion must exist - it would be like a deaf man 'reverse engineering' a saxophone from a single sign-language descussion of the music it makes.

I don't actually think that the GA will come up with exactly the spider, until they have some captured tech, at least bits and pieces of it. I think the focused effort on the mystery might result in some other new twists to drive and hyperphysics, however. Maybe with practical applications in 3-5+ years even.

Let's recall that Gram/Ghost Rider took, what, forty years?

dreamrider

Well, no one ever thought the inertial compensators could be improved so well either, but Grayson, which had a lower tech level than the Solarian League, managed to come up with a rather ingenuous way of making them much better, on the level of being 30-40% better I believe than the best Manticore could put out at the time. The streak drive doesn't necessarily need anything that the Solarian League systems can't make now. It's not a totally new game changer like the FTL comms, it's just a rather different approach and I think fully in the capability of the majority of the SL systems and companies that can build ships. it's just something no one ever thought about because the approach was so different.

My thought was, the MAlign knows Manticore and Haven, the Andermani Empire and Beowulf people are looking and gunning for them. If they can spread out their targeting radius, get them to be looking in the wrong areas while the RF builds it's forces and prepares for future annexations and to deal with the GA.

As I think about there, there's lots of ways the MAlign can mess with Manticore with a relatively moderate risk of being caught.

SWM wrote:

Zakharra wrote:
That's the thing--I don't think anyone outside the GA is going to independently develop either the Streak drive or the Spider drive for quite a while. And I don't think the RF will be so stupid as to "independently" develop either drive until enough people have discovered it that it is not suspicious. The RF is in it for the long game. They have no need to develop the Spider Drive or Streak Drive. They have the Alignment Navy to quietly deal with any situations that may require that kind of tech. There is no reason for the RF to endanger their secret.


Aah.. just using the ships that have that tech sends a signal to the GA that the MAlign navy is active and around. If other nations 'develop' the tech, it gives the RF/MAlign some cover. And there's nothing to say that just because the GA can't make them now, other nations cannot have designed and made their own. It doesn't necessarily need to be the drives at first, but some of the other tech (minus the assassin/remote control nanotech of course) the MAlign has. But there are multiple opportunities for the MAlign to spread out what the GA is looking for. If the GA demands that nation(s) to see or share the development process and end result, the nation(s) can rightfully refuse (who would blame them?) or demand the GA share -its- MDMs., inertial compensators and/or gravitronic FTL units with them in exchange for a look at the new tech.

So what if it tells the GA that the Alignment is still around. That's not news! The Alignment doesn't need any "cover", except that they will undoubtedly try as often as possible to use them only when it cannot be proven that they were actually used. I say again, there is no reason for the RF to produce Streak or Spider Drive ships until plenty of other people have already done it. Manticore is not going to be able to tell from the use of Streak and Spider ships that the RF is affiliated with the Alignment.

Yes the RF/MAlign will need that cover. Their hidden system and the wormhole in it are supposed to be discovered and brought into the RF. If the GA gets a relatively solid idea of who is really backing the RF, they will make a move. The MAlign is in no position to come out into the open for a long time. They are to small and operate better in the shadows than in the light atm. If the RF starts using the streak and/or spider drives and is the only polity using hat tech, that's an immediate red flag. Hence my thought of them spreading some of their tech out as red herrings. It gets the GA galloping off on wild goose chases and lets the RF/ MAlign make its moves in more secrecy.

dreamrider wrote:Recall that the human applied hyperphysics community HAS been working on breaking the Theta wall...for 4+ centuries without success.

No, they can break the Theta wall without any major issues using military hyper drives and screens. Comments in HotQ (when Adm Alexander is talking to Truman) suggest that military hyperdrives are completely capable of breaking the Iota wall too. Once.

“Too high. We bounced off the iota wall a day out of Yeltsin.”

Despite himself, Alexander flinched. Dear God, she must have taken out all the interlocks. No ship had ever crossed into the iota bands and survived—no one even knew if a ship could survive there.

Weird Harold wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:A sudden and uneven shift in the galactic arms mix combined with dissolution of the league would be a big recipe for instability and war.

Manticoran Tech is going to spread no matter what Manticore and the GA do to prevent it. Sharing the tech allows some control over how and how fast that arms mix changes. caefeful selection of who the tech gets shared with will also help control what that tech gets used for.

BobfromSydney wrote:I think that post SL states would value three things above all:
1. Security
2. Access to Trade (Markets)
3. Access to Technology

In general I think everything else can be satisfied internally since each state has access to the 'resources' of an entire star system.

Sharing military tech satisfies two of your three points if done wisely. Sharing export tech -- LACs, system defense pods, FTL Comm, etc -- allows a system to manage its own security. Sharing export licensing -- the plans to build their own military hardware -- give a system access to advanced technology.

Harold, wrt tech sharing, I think we should do well to consider this rough analogy.

The US sharing military tech with its treaty partners in NATO wouldn't cause much disruption, because she's developed a firm and relatively trusting relationship with those partners over a period of several decades and after making major sacrifices on their behalf - all things that encouraged MUTUAL trust and, yes, dependency.

However, would the same be true should the US suddenly start sharing her military tech - even a watered-down version - with selected treaty partners in sub-Saharan Africa? When no such relationship of mutual trust and dependency has been cultivated before, when in fact the one side of the relationship has a long history of DISTRUSTING the intentions of the other?

Where the US would be able to expect that any such tech sharing with her NATO partners would enhance stability rather than lead to instability, I rather expect the opposite with regards to tech sharing with any hypothetical partners in Africa.

Relationships like those take decades to grow to the level of trust that is needed to overcome literally centuries of distrust and bitterness. (Btw, in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, I can tell you that such feelings are directed towards the West, in general, rather than America specifically; it's just that as the leader of the West, America tends to be a SYMBOL of the West).

You mean like when we shared our nuclear weapons tech with the USSR?

hanuman wrote:The US sharing military tech with its treaty partners in NATO wouldn't cause much disruption, because she's developed a firm and relatively trusting relationship with those partners over a period of several decades and after making major sacrifices on their behalf - all things that encouraged MUTUAL trust and, yes, dependency.

However, would the same be true should the US suddenly start sharing her military tech - even a watered-down version - with selected treaty partners in sub-Saharan Africa? When no such relationship of mutual trust and dependency has been cultivated before, when in fact the one side of the relationship has a long history of DISTRUSTING the intentions of the other?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-16_Fight ... _operators

1 United States operators

1.1 United States Air Force
1.1.1 Air Combat Command
1.1.2 Air Education and Training Command
1.1.3 Air Force Reserve Command
1.1.4 Air National Guard
1.1.5 Pacific Air Forces
1.1.6 US Air Forces in Europe
1.2 United States Navy
1.3 National Aeronautics and Space Administration

2 Original NATO partners

2.1 Belgium
2.2 Denmark
2.3 Netherlands
2.4 Norway

3 Europe

3.1 Greece
3.2 Italy
3.3 Poland
3.4 Portugal

4 Middle East

4.1 Bahrain
4.2 Egypt
4.3 Israel
4.4 Iraq
4.5 Jordan
4.6 Oman
4.7 Turkey
4.8 United Arab Emirates

5 Africa

5.1 Morocco

6 Asia

6.1 Indonesia
6.2 Pakistan
6.3 Singapore
6.4 South Korea
6.5 Taiwan
6.6 Thailand

7 Latin America

7.1 Chile
7.2 Venezuela

8 Future and potential operators

8.1 Bulgaria
8.2 Colombia
8.3 Philippines
8.4 Romania

9 Cancelled orders and failed bids

9.1 Argentina
9.2 Australia
9.3 Brazil
9.4 India
9.5 Iran
9.6 New Zealand

It certainly doesn't look to me like the US is limiting F-16 sales to NATO -- or even SEATO -- Allies.

The US hasn't limited military sales to allies since before the end of WWII.

Iran still has a dozen or so F-14s sold to the Shah (none serviceable since we won't sell them any spares.)

Egypt has flown a mix of second line Russian and US jets since the F-86 was first declared surplus (maybe even earlier for a Navy jet I'm not familiar with.)

Pakistan and India also have a mix of Soviet, US, and English aircraft, despite their on-again-off-again border war over Kashmir.

Chile has flown surplus US aircraft since the end of WWII when they bought a bunch of P-51 Mustangs.

That's just a small sample of the Military Assistance sales of first and second line aircraft technology -- minus a few classified systems the US isn't ready to share.

I didn't bother to look up things like tanks, APCs, small arms, anti-air missiles, anti-missile missiles, ground and air radars, military transport aircraft, or any of the rest of the multi-billion dollar US Foreign Military Sales program.

I don't see any bar to Manticore selling "Manticore Light" export arms to treaty partners -- especially since they have a history of sharing military tech with treaty partners like Alizon. Zanzibar, Greyson, Marsh, Erewhon, Torch, and presumably all the rest of the unnamed/seldom named members of the Manticoran Alliance.

I don't see any bar to Haven, Greyson, the Andermani or Erewhon selling "Haven Sector" military tech of one level or another, either.

What I don't see in the near future is much of a market for SLN tech.

kzt wrote:You mean like when we shared our nuclear weapons tech with the USSR?

Despite various conspiracy theories, I don't believe that was "sharing" in the sense used in this thread. I don't doubt that somebody's intelligence service is going to buy or steal a few secrets, but Manticore's past record is pretty good at keeping the critical discoveries secret even when captured intact by the RHN.

Zakharra wrote: Merchant ships with the streak drives. they'd be able to haul cargoes faster than regular merchies. This means they can get a cargo to the target market faster, it could lower insurance and the cost of shipping, or there could be smaller merchantmen that specialize in speedy delivery (interstellar UPS?). With merchants, you don't necessarily need to have the most cargo of a certain type, you just need to get there before the rest of your competitors.

If that would be such an advantage, why do merchants ships seldom go above the Delta Band? (ref: Hakwing's complaint about picking up a scratch convoy in Gregor that slowed Athena and Hawkwing and put them in the trap of Giscard's commerce raiders.)

If a hyperdrive robust enough to reach the Theta Band isn't economical except for dispatch boats and luxury liners, why would any merchant spend the money for a hyperdrive twice as big and robust to reach the Iota Band?

Zakharra wrote:

swm wrote:So what if it tells the GA that the Alignment is still around. That's not news! The Alignment doesn't need any "cover", except that they will undoubtedly try as often as possible to use them only when it cannot be proven that they were actually used. I say again, there is no reason for the RF to produce Streak or Spider Drive ships until plenty of other people have already done it. Manticore is not going to be able to tell from the use of Streak and Spider ships that the RF is affiliated with the Alignment.

Yes the RF/MAlign will need that cover. Their hidden system and the wormhole in it are supposed to be discovered and brought into the RF. If the GA gets a relatively solid idea of who is really backing the RF, they will make a move. The MAlign is in no position to come out into the open for a long time. They are to small and operate better in the shadows than in the light atm. If the RF starts using the streak and/or spider drives and is the only polity using hat tech, that's an immediate red flag. Hence my thought of them spreading some of their tech out as red herrings. It gets the GA galloping off on wild goose chases and lets the RF/ MAlign make its moves in more secrecy.

Where are you getting these ideas? No, Darius is NOT going to be discovered and brought publicly into the Renaissance Factor. Darius is going to remain completely secret for as long as the Alignment can manage, because that's where all the leaders are hiding, and their secret shipyards, and lots of other things. Darius will not be part of the RF! If Darius is discovered, the Alignment loses.

You keep repeating that if the RF starts using the Streak and Spider Drives and no one else is, they will give themselves away. I say again--the RF is not going to be using the Streak and Spider Drives! There is no reason for them to do so. I don't see why you aren't understanding what I am saying. You haven't given any reason why the RF would foolishly try to use the Streak and Spider Drives. The Alignment hasn't even given them the technology! Detweiler had to reassure them that the Alignment did have the tech and that it worked.

Regarding the discussion on selling Military tech, I'd like to add a few comments. I have worked in that field for the past 30 years (in a Government position) and while I will not disclose details on-line (my Security Officer would be quite put out with me), I do want to make a couple of points.

One, it is quite true that we sell stuff to almost anyone--but the level of stuff depends on the countries ability to pay and the state of their alliance with us (or in many cases in the Middle East, their percieved counter to forces that oppose us..thus the sale to the Shah of Iran and the continuing sales to the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia as a counter to Iraq).

And yes, there are systems that we only release to our 'best friends' (NATO, Japan, Israel), and some things (such as being able to re-program black boxes with threat programs) are never released to anyone.

But the basic systems (and weapons) are sold, and to quite a variety of customers. Training at Military schools (pilots, missile techs, maintenance operations, etc.) is also part, along with repair support and spare parts/special tools.

And all major purchases (by law) must be reported to Congress and approved (or at least not disapproved). You can look here: http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales and see everything of major value that we plan to sell to a variety of customers.

Other countries sales may be a little more....circumspect, but I imagine Manticore probably plays by rules similar to ours.

Just a couple of thoughts.