Solarian Military Catchup Attempts

fallsfromtrees wrote:Much of the interesting stuff would still be covered by the Official Secrets Act, which means publishing it could be considered an act of treason.

kzt wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Much of the interesting stuff would still be covered by the Official Secrets Act, which means publishing it could be considered an act of treason.

Sure, if you are publishing design documents. But let me remind you what the policy of the SEM government was, which was that the RMN had an insurmountable lead over the Peeps, the Peeps were finished as a military power, and their signing the paperwork to end the war in the MA's favor was just a matter of time. Books/articles that would tend to reinforce these positions are certainly not going to be opposed.

The war was considered over for 5 years. What was published about WW2 between 1945 and 1950? How much of the wartime censorship survived?

fallsfromtrees wrote:

kzt wrote:Sure, if you are publishing design documents. But let me remind you what the policy of the SEM government was, which was that the RMN had an insurmountable lead over the Peeps, the Peeps were finished as a military power, and their signing the paperwork to end the war in the MA's favor was just a matter of time. Books/articles that would tend to reinforce these positions are certainly not going to be opposed.

The war was considered over for 5 years. What was published about WW2 between 1945 and 1950? How much of the wartime censorship survived?

You are correct, not much. But about the only major technological secret from WWII was the atomic bomb, and by 1950, there was evidence that that secret had been compromised - in that the Russians had detonated their own atomic weapon. The Rosenbergs were executed for having passed that information to them, so there was still some effort to keep it secret, although it point of fact the biggest secret was that it was possible to build one, and that was kind of let out of the bag on Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945.

stewart wrote:

ErikM wrote:I'll drop in my two bits and try to stick to the original posting. Feel free to comment or nuke it from orbit...

The top of the SLN seems to have realized that Battle Fleet's current ships, especially the reserves, are basically worthless as anything other than source of parts and materials. As of the end of ART they seem to be stumbling, 'aided' by the MA, towards more BC based strategies while R&D tries to play catchup with the SEM. Whether BC strategies, particularly against SEM-held or -allied systems, would work is IMO open to conjecture (LAC groups).

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What we have is basically a parallel to the European Navys' (and in particular the Russian Tsarist Navy's) attitude about the capability of any of their navies compared to Tojo's IJN prior to the end of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.
Of course the USSR got the paybacks in 1945 re-taking all of Sakhalin and the Kuril's but that is another story.

In 1905, Imperial Russia (and most of Europe) considered Japan to be Asian barbarians and China to be a fallen / failed nation living in its history.

That attitude echos similar to the Sollie perceived / molded perception of all star-nations outside the SL Core.

I suspect that the SLN catch-up efforts will follow these trails:
1) FTL Comms -- initially bulky and crude, similar to RMN at Basilisk (OBS) or 2nd Yeltsin or PN FTL trials at end of the 1st war and start of the 2nd. Initially Morse / CW operation.
2) We have seen their initial pod missiles, courtesy of Technodyne, as a rough parallel to the early capacitor fed ERM.
3) Noted elsewhere that LAC development will likely start down the Havenite path of modifying / building up a bare-bones pinnace / assault shuttle into a more capable craft.
4) Stealth RD's have been "not seen", but their existence and effectiveness has been demonstrated during Lancoon II. It will take a while for that to be duplicated, but half of the job is KNOWing that it is possible.

-- Stewart

fallsfromtrees wrote:

ErikM wrote:I'll drop in my two bits and try to stick to the original posting. Feel free to comment or nuke it from orbit...

The top of the SLN seems to have realized that Battle Fleet's current ships, especially the reserves, are basically worthless as anything other than source of parts and materials. As of the end of ART they seem to be stumbling, 'aided' by the MA, towards more BC based strategies while R&D tries to play catchup with the SEM. Whether BC strategies, particularly against SEM-held or -allied systems, would work is IMO open to conjecture (LAC groups).

I've got some assumptions about what the SLN, and particularly BF really does know about SEM and havenite weaponry and ships as of the end of ART. In particular I'm thinking about generally accepted knowledge, not what 'crackpots' like al-Fanudahi might think.

- The SLN doesn't know about the Mk 16's full range and capabilites. At Zunker they were fired from 30M km. Monica and New Tuscany reports seem to be discounted or assume external pods were used.

- The SLN thinks dual drive missiles are large enough to require pods. IIRC Technodyne has only released the Trebuchet MDM to the SLN.

- The SLN has not thought about internal pod carriage. The time mantie pods were used against them, they were prelaid or externally carried. Their own pods are external-only.

- The SLN doesn't know about modern LAC offensive capabilities. They were shown to Filareta at second Manticore in the defense but not in the strike role. They should realize that CLACs exist though.

- The SLN knows the SEM has working FTL comm and has crunched it down to fit in recon platforms. See the Hermes bouys at second Manticore.

- The SLN hasn't a clue about SEM and havenite ship manning requirements.

- The SLN doesn't know about Keyhole, much less Apollo.

What I'm wondering is, if someone in the SLN does start thinking about whether pods can be carried inside warships, will they think that the Nikes are podlayers? After all, if podlayers exist then the manties would have had a reason to build BCs that big, beyond pride, intimidation factor or megalomania.

It might actually be an interesting story to see al-Fanudahi try to run a design study to try to draw up rough capability requirements or even plans for a 'next generation' BC or SD and assuming that al-Fanudahi has thought about internal pod carriage (maybe basing his thinking on fleet minelayers?). For the SD they might actually get something like an early Medusa (as of operation Buttercup) or maybe an early Sovereign of Space. Problems fitting enough SLN pods in a Nike-sized hull might lead al-Fanudahi to realize mantie missiles have to be quite a bit smaller than SLN ones (i.e. at the scarier end of his own 'radical' capability projections).

I'm not sure whether such a design study would be run as an 'against the fall of night' crash program or if it would be bureaucratic infighting as usual. There seem to be people at the top of the SLN who realise the former might (or should) be the case.

Comments?

It's not clear how much information from second Manticore actually made it back to the SLN. Since a state of war now exists between Manticore and the SL, any SLN survivors of second Manticore are now prisoners of war, and the SLN will not have been able to debrief them. The SLN does know about the FTL comms, as they have been used by Manticore on multiple occasions, and sometimes the SLN officer who saw it, actually survived to tell the tale. Not clear they have any knowledge of LACs, since so far, LACs were only used against them at second Manticore, so any information would have come from observers looking the ware between Haven and Manticore, and the SLN wasn't interested in a couple of neo-barb nations beating on each other. They probably regard any information about them as grossly exaggerated, and therefore not to be believed. Which means they are in for a very rude awakening the first time a BC gets ambushed by a squadron of LACs. It may actually take a number of times, before a BC survives long enough to get home to complain about the LAC of information about them.

Zakharra wrote:

ErikM wrote:I'll drop in my two bits and try to stick to the original posting. Feel free to comment or nuke it from orbit...

The top of the SLN seems to have realized that Battle Fleet's current ships, especially the reserves, are basically worthless as anything other than source of parts and materials. As of the end of ART they seem to be stumbling, 'aided' by the MA, towards more BC based strategies while R&D tries to play catchup with the SEM. Whether BC strategies, particularly against SEM-held or -allied systems, would work is IMO open to conjecture (LAC groups).

I've got some assumptions about what the SLN, and particularly BF really does know about SEM and havenite weaponry and ships as of the end of ART. In particular I'm thinking about generally accepted knowledge, not what 'crackpots' like al-Fanudahi might think.

- The SLN doesn't know about the Mk 16's full range and capabilites. At Zunker they were fired from 30M km. Monica and New Tuscany reports seem to be discounted or assume external pods were used.

- The SLN thinks dual drive missiles are large enough to require pods. IIRC Technodyne has only released the Trebuchet MDM to the SLN.

- The SLN has not thought about internal pod carriage. The time mantie pods were used against them, they were prelaid or externally carried. Their own pods are external-only.

- The SLN doesn't know about modern LAC offensive capabilities. They were shown to Filareta at second Manticore in the defense but not in the strike role. They should realize that CLACs exist though.

- The SLN knows the SEM has working FTL comm and has crunched it down to fit in recon platforms. See the Hermes bouys at second Manticore.

- The SLN hasn't a clue about SEM and havenite ship manning requirements.

- The SLN doesn't know about Keyhole, much less Apollo.

What I'm wondering is, if someone in the SLN does start thinking about whether pods can be carried inside warships, will they think that the Nikes are podlayers? After all, if podlayers exist then the manties would have had a reason to build BCs that big, beyond pride, intimidation factor or megalomania.

It might actually be an interesting story to see al-Fanudahi try to run a design study to try to draw up rough capability requirements or even plans for a 'next generation' BC or SD and assuming that al-Fanudahi has thought about internal pod carriage (maybe basing his thinking on fleet minelayers?). For the SD they might actually get something like an early Medusa (as of operation Buttercup) or maybe an early Sovereign of Space. Problems fitting enough SLN pods in a Nike-sized hull might lead al-Fanudahi to realize mantie missiles have to be quite a bit smaller than SLN ones (i.e. at the scarier end of his own 'radical' capability projections).

I'm not sure whether such a design study would be run as an 'against the fall of night' crash program or if it would be bureaucratic infighting as usual. There seem to be people at the top of the SLN who realise the former might (or should) be the case.

Comments?

fallsfromtrees wrote:It's not clear how much information from second Manticore actually made it back to the SLN. Since a state of war now exists between Manticore and the SL, any SLN survivors of second Manticore are now prisoners of war, and the SLN will not have been able to debrief them. The SLN does know about the FTL comms, as they have been used by Manticore on multiple occasions, and sometimes the SLN officer who saw it, actually survived to tell the tale. Not clear they have any knowledge of LACs, since so far, LACs were only used against them at second Manticore, so any information would have come from observers looking the ware between Haven and Manticore, and the SLN wasn't interested in a couple of neo-barb nations beating on each other. They probably regard any information about them as grossly exaggerated, and therefore not to be believed. Which means they are in for a very rude awakening the first time a BC gets ambushed by a squadron of LACs. It may actually take a number of times, before a BC survives long enough to get home to complain about the LAC of information about them.

I'm sure the FF and surviving BF units are going to give credence to the 'outrageous and wildly exaggerated' reports that had been circulating about RMN ships. so it's very likely the cruiser captains will assume -any- RMN ship is dangerous even if its small since it was only BCs that scragged and forced a SLN fleet into surrendering. The 2nd Battle of Manticore could be explained away since it was the home system where all of the remaining goodies were. But the outlying systems? that would be harder to explain away. So I do not see hardly any FF/BF captains thinking that any RMN ship is harmless just because its small.

fallsfromtrees wrote: I'm sure the FF and surviving BF units are going to give credence to the 'outrageous and wildly exaggerated' reports that had been circulating about RMN ships. so it's very likely the cruiser captains will assume -any- RMN ship is dangerous even if its small since it was only BCs that scragged and forced a SLN fleet into surrendering. The 2nd Battle of Manticore could be explained away since it was the home system where all of the remaining goodies were. But the outlying systems? that would be harder to explain away. So I do not see hardly any FF/BF captains thinking that any RMN ship is harmless just because its small.

Zakharra wrote: A question for all of you, is there a text note on how the stealth works in hiding thew gravity pulses/waves of impellers? I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone can hide impellers enough that they could be invisible, especially within 15-20 million miles or more of a ship with decent gravimetric/gravity sensors. I can understand turning down the power on them to falsify a reading into thinking its something smaller/less powerful, but effectively making them completely invisible (aka stealth)?

n7axw wrote:

kzt wrote:There is a huge amount of data on the first war and operation Buttercup. What do officers how have been beached do? They write books and articles about their wartime experiences.

The BoM occurred inside the Manticore home system. What is the Manticore position on press freedom? I can pretty much assure you that there is more then one newssource that has some very accurate sources about exactly what happened, at what ranges and when. Then there would have been the investigations afterwards, which would have been covered intensely given that about a million RMN members were killed in the fight.

Good points, kzt. The difficulty so far has been that you have to have people in positions of responsibility with IQs larger than their shoe size gather that info, collate it and then plan accordingly. We haven't seen much of that so far...

Don