Countering the Spider – Real World Inspirations

MAD-4A wrote:

SWM wrote:To reiterate a well-known quote, space is big. Mind-bogglingly big.

that's why they are fired into an area where a "contact" was "detected" but no solid detection has been locked onto, rather than just randomly fired into space "hoping" to get in the right area. this would have the same effect as the old depth-charges, very inaccurate and very hard to make an actual "kill". In addition, if some sort of grav-waive “sonar” or “Gravar” is used to detect “pings” from the spider drive, then while these CMs area spiraling around the area the “Gravar” would be “blind” just as sonar was when using depth-charges. Later a new better “hedgehog” would replace it.

But using counter-missiles or high-speed drones to sweep out a zone just won't work. It's not like depth-charges, because depth charges have a vastly greater chance of hitting or causing damage to the target. With the system Theemile described, if the counter-missiles had a range of 1 light-minute, they would have only a 0.000002 probability of hitting the target. You would have to fire 500,000 of them to have a reasonable chance of hitting it once. That's not a depth charge. And that is assuming you can make counter missiles with a 1 light-minute range and a 100 km wedge, and could pin the target location down to a 500,000 km radius (only 1.6 light-seconds!). A ship can leave a volume like that within seconds.

Dafmeister wrote:I'm curious as to where this theory that the spider drive won't work in hyperspace comes from. Wouldn't the 'legs' simply latch onto the wall to the next-highest hyper band? So in n-space they use the alpha wall, in the alpha band they use the beta wall etc.

The streak drive doesn't provide any motive power, so strictly speaking it's not a 'drive' at all. It's an improved hyper generator that lets you survive translation through the iota and kappa walls, giving you a higher effective n-space speed by travelling in higher hyper bands than everyone else can access.

I agree with you. Spider probably DOES work in hyperspace

However, I have always felt that the need for more efficient hyperspace travel was the strongest argument that the final spider ships would be provided with at least adequate nodes/rings (on extensible structures, perhaps?) to generate W. sails. If these ships have to avoid all grav waves & wormholes in their strategic movements, it is a huge, huge handicap.

This should also allow them to use impeller/compensator acceleration & power generation when operating in safe environments.

Note how this would also extend the parallel with submarine operations, paralleling the historical paradigm of surface/subsurface, diesel/electric operating modes.

Other benefits, of course, would be the ability to throw up some degree of wedge and sidewall defense if discovered/localized, and possibly a buckler or two.

Indeed, I have always suspected that the need to provide for all those different power and drive systems, and traveling configurations, is one of the contributing factors for the (implied) huge size of the Leonard Detweilers.

(Now, to play devil's advocate, the other solution to the strategic movement problem is if the spider 'legs' can be used in some as-yet-unhinted manner as alternative grav wave stabilization and maneuvering structures. Perhaps less efficient than W. sails, but usable. I have a vision of the sweeps and tiller oar of white water rafting here.)

dreamrider

Carrying on with real world anti sub inspirations. One method developed during the cold war for detecting Soviet nuclear submarines was the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) network, later supplemented by a mobile version called SURTASS (Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System). Basically these are chains of sonar microphones and emitters either in-place on the seafloor or trailed behind a ship.

Now the only current proven way of detecting an attack by Spider ships is to detect the minuscule hyper-footprint they create when dropping out of hyper to attack a system. Manticore and allies already have very advanced sensor arrays to detect incoming vessels, yet after the Yawata Strike and the revelation that the sensor ping of the Spider fleets arrival was dismissed as a sensor ghost it seems to me that one step forward is too improve your hyper-footprint detection arrays. (Its already been said that another Oyster Bay style strike could not be carried out again on Manticore since they now know what to look for, but military paranoia will want to close the gap anyway).

Now while they (Hemphill,Foracker, and Semoes) rush to find some new sensor system that can actually detect a Spider, one stopgap method they could do is to thicken up the Manticore system sensor net. This can be done either by increasing the number of sensor platforms to provide better/wider coverage or to modify the sensors to become more sensitive/track smaller signals with greater priority. This can then be linked into the defense grid, so that if a suspect signal is detected, a massive missile/defense ship response can be deployed to find the target.

This practice can be employed not just in Manticore but at any of the Grand Alliance facilities that might warrant a Spider attack. Sensor platforms would be cheaper to mass produce than a whole fleets of defense ships and the Keyhole/Moriarty hybrids known as Mycroft might be utalised on coordinating them too. With the increasing sophistication and importance of drone based sensor/quick response systems, we might see some very sophisticated dispersed remote defenses come into play soon.

Mathematics says that they can in fact do this pretty much any time they want. The event detection to response loop is so long that the odds of detecting a spider are actually pretty much null. If you add spoofing and fake insertions Manticore runs of of assets to try to catch them.

dreamrider wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:I'm curious as to where this theory that the spider drive won't work in hyperspace comes from. Wouldn't the 'legs' simply latch onto the wall to the next-highest hyper band? So in n-space they use the alpha wall, in the alpha band they use the beta wall etc.

The streak drive doesn't provide any motive power, so strictly speaking it's not a 'drive' at all. It's an improved hyper generator that lets you survive translation through the iota and kappa walls, giving you a higher effective n-space speed by travelling in higher hyper bands than everyone else can access.

I agree with you. Spider probably DOES work in hyperspace

However, I have always felt that the need for more efficient hyperspace travel was the strongest argument that the final spider ships would be provided with at least adequate nodes/rings (on extensible structures, perhaps?) to generate W. sails. If these ships have to avoid all grav waves & wormholes in their strategic movements, it is a huge, huge handicap.

That is not a problem. David has indicated that spider drive ships can use wormholes. Since that requires the use of Warshawski sails, that implies that spider ships can also use Warshawski sails in grav waves.

What David has said is that spider drive ships cannot use impeller wedges. That is different from using Warshawski sails.
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Valen123456 wrote:Carrying on with real world anti sub inspirations. One method developed during the cold war for detecting Soviet nuclear submarines was the SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) network, later supplemented by a mobile version called SURTASS (Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System). Basically these are chains of sonar microphones and emitters either in-place on the seafloor or trailed behind a ship.

Now the only current proven way of detecting an attack by Spider ships is to detect the minuscule hyper-footprint they create when dropping out of hyper to attack a system. Manticore and allies already have very advanced sensor arrays to detect incoming vessels, yet after the Yawata Strike and the revelation that the sensor ping of the Spider fleets arrival was dismissed as a sensor ghost it seems to me that one step forward is too improve your hyper-footprint detection arrays. (Its already been said that another Oyster Bay style strike could not be carried out again on Manticore since they now know what to look for, but military paranoia will want to close the gap anyway).

Now while they (Hemphill,Foracker, and Semoes) rush to find some new sensor system that can actually detect a Spider, one stopgap method they could do is to thicken up the Manticore system sensor net. This can be done either by increasing the number of sensor platforms to provide better/wider coverage or to modify the sensors to become more sensitive/track smaller signals with greater priority. This can then be linked into the defense grid, so that if a suspect signal is detected, a massive missile/defense ship response can be deployed to find the target.

This practice can be employed not just in Manticore but at any of the Grand Alliance facilities that might warrant a Spider attack. Sensor platforms would be cheaper to mass produce than a whole fleets of defense ships and the Keyhole/Moriarty hybrids known as Mycroft might be utalised on coordinating them too. With the increasing sophistication and importance of drone based sensor/quick response systems, we might see some very sophisticated dispersed remote defenses come into play soon.

I think you are misreading what happened. They did not "dismiss" the detection as a sensor ghost. They sent ships out to investigate, just as they always do. The problem was that they did not know that any ship could accelerate out of their search zone without leaving signals from an impeller wedge.

Manticore does not need to improve its system sensor web. They have already proven that it is sufficient to detect the translation of any ship, spider drive or conventional. And their response in getting a search crew out to investigate was as good as possible. The question is how can they find the spider ship after they get the search crews into the area. The spider ship would have hours to accelerate by the time any search crews can arrive.

SWM wrote:

Valen123456 wrote:Sensor platforms would be cheaper to mass produce than a whole fleets of defense ships and the Keyhole/Moriarty hybrids known as Mycroft might be utalised on coordinating them too. With the increasing sophistication and importance of drone based sensor/quick response systems, we might see some very sophisticated dispersed remote defenses come into play soon.

I think you are misreading what happened. They did not "dismiss" the detection as a sensor ghost. They sent ships out to investigate, just as they always do. The problem was that they did not know that any ship could accelerate out of their search zone without leaving signals from an impeller wedge.

Manticore does not need to improve its system sensor web. They have already proven that it is sufficient to detect the translation of any ship, spider drive or conventional. And their response in getting a search crew out to investigate was as good as possible. The question is how can they find the spider ship after they get the search crews into the area. The spider ship would have hours to accelerate by the time any search crews can arrive.

Well, it would be very expensive, and at risk of getting jumped from hyperspace, but Manticore could cut the detection and reaction time down by positioning secondary sensor nodes (with attached response DDs) outward from Manticore.

If you put roughly 175 of them 2 light weeks out that should cut the detection and response time by up to about 50% for an emergence within a light month of Manticore.

But that's 175 sensor emplacements that are a good fraction as sensative and the main Manticoran system sensors, plus 175 destroyer groups to respond, all hung out way beyond the hyper limit or the system defenese - so each very vulnerable to surprise attack from hyper.


So I think it's a bad idea - but technically (if not economically or militarily) possible.
Distributed sensors alone, without distributed response forces, might extend your sensor range but doesn't help with what you pointed out was the real problem - the lengthy response time by reaction forces.

Thanks for catching that SWM, I've got egg on my face. I had multiplied each CM by the 3rd dimension of the wedge then the distance traveled (when they would be, at best additive), increasing my volume swept by 2 magnitudes.

SWM wrote:But using counter-missiles or high-speed drones to sweep out a zone just won't work. It's not like depth-charges, because depth charges have a vastly greater chance of hitting or causing damage to the target. With the system Theemile described, if the counter-missiles had a range of 1 light-minute, they would have only a 0.000002 probability of hitting the target. You would have to fire 500,000 of them to have a reasonable chance of hitting it once. That's not a depth charge. And that is assuming you can make counter missiles with a 1 light-minute range and a 100 km wedge, and could pin the target location down to a 500,000 km radius (only 1.6 light-seconds!). A ship can leave a volume like that within seconds.

Theemile wrote:Thanks for catching that SWM, I've got egg on my face. I had multiplied each CM by the 3rd dimension of the wedge then the distance traveled (when they would be, at best additive), increasing my volume swept by 2 magnitudes.

SWM wrote:But using counter-missiles or high-speed drones to sweep out a zone just won't work. It's not like depth-charges, because depth charges have a vastly greater chance of hitting or causing damage to the target. With the system Theemile described, if the counter-missiles had a range of 1 light-minute, they would have only a 0.000002 probability of hitting the target. You would have to fire 500,000 of them to have a reasonable chance of hitting it once. That's not a depth charge. And that is assuming you can make counter missiles with a 1 light-minute range and a 100 km wedge, and could pin the target location down to a 500,000 km radius (only 1.6 light-seconds!). A ship can leave a volume like that within seconds.

Hey, I've made mistakes like that myself. (I still grimace when I remember working for hours on a homework problem where I was consistently getting an answer I knew was 42 orders of magnitude too high. )

Jonathan_S wrote:So I think it's a bad idea - but technically (if not economically or militarily) possible.
Distributed sensors alone, without distributed response forces, might extend your sensor range but doesn't help with what you pointed out was the real problem - the lengthy response time by reaction forces.

The entire idea is pure security theatre. It doesn't matter how far out you can detect a translation, there will always be a range where you can't see shit. An enemy that is perfectly comfortable with the idea of committing his attack force to a year-long operation for an Oyster-Bay-like payoff will find ways to make that happen.

In my mind, detecting Spider-drive ships as they translate is good, but not critical. Detecting them before they enter weapons range is, and that's a completely different (but more easily solvable) problem.