Upcoming designs: regarding the Apollo ACM...

A quick add as to why I think this is an interesting line of exploration: In the HonorVerse end of PD1922 we have a bunch of pissed geeks from HMSS Weyland, including Paulo and Ginger who also have a pretty good perspective of "how to help the shooters win". It could be argued that they'd be busy figuring out how to upgrade current Haven hulls, but that's construction tech, not R&D.

Meaning that our collection of pissed geeks don't have much 'to do', in terms of deployable tech until the RMN is back in the game in terms of building new ships, but whatever they do needs to be useful EVERYWHERE during the intervals. Given that the ACM is a game changer that originated out of the Weyland projects, I'd be heavily into the business of to figure out how to make it's usage even more powerful and nearly ubiquitous.

SharkHunter wrote:Keep in mind, this isn't a tube launch from an existing ship, it's a newer design than the Invictus, designed to take advantage of lessons learned up to now. Thoughts?

I should think that one of the lessons learned is that it is faster and cheaper to design and build a new Mk of Flatpack pod than it is to modify a warship. Especially since any ship capable of employing a Flatpack missile pod can employ a new system immediately -- Even Apollo can be used in light-speed-control mode by pretty much an RMN warship from LAC to SD(P)

Given that lesson...

Build a Flatpack containing two "ACM-B" and Four ECM (Dazzler and Dragon's Tooth x2 each) Employ with the five other Flatpacks in an SD(P)'s salvo to give "Apollo" FTL control to 70 Mk-16G or 50 Mk-23 or X Mk-Y missiles.

All existing RMN ships could employ such a pod, although only Keyhole could employ them in en mass or Keyhole II in FTL mode.

Weird Harold wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Keep in mind, this isn't a tube launch from an existing ship, it's a newer design than the Invictus, designed to take advantage of lessons learned up to now. Thoughts?

I should think that one of the lessons learned is that it is faster and cheaper to design and build a new Mk of Flatpack pod than it is to modify a warship. Especially since any ship capable of employing a Flatpack missile pod can employ a new system immediately -- Even Apollo can be used in light-speed-control mode by pretty much an RMN warship from LAC to SD(P)

Given that lesson...

Build a Flatpack containing two "ACM-B" and Four ECM (Dazzler and Dragon's Tooth x2 each) Employ with the five other Flatpacks in an SD(P)'s salvo to give "Apollo" FTL control to 70 Mk-16G or 50 Mk-23 or X Mk-Y missiles.

All existing RMN ships could employ such a pod, although only Keyhole could employ them in en mass or Keyhole II in FTL mode.

Dang straight. Or drop that kind of a flatpack at "one per tube salvo" from a Sag-C or stacked salvos from a Roland/squadron , and let the "ACM-B"s, etc. go to work.

Plus a question: Granted it's not Keyhole-II, but until we're "in the smoke of battle", what stops a Sag-C or Roland from communicating with an ACM anyway? I'd be busy designing a retrofit that works up until the smaller starships have to "roll wedge" for defensive purposes. It's not like the SLN has even closed to effective missile range of an active RMN warship out in the Verge except at Monica where HMS Hexapuma was ambushed by pods and couldn't/wouldn't withdraw.

SharkHunter wrote:...what stops a Sag-C or Roland from communicating with an ACM anyway? ...

Nothing if you're talking about light-speed control links.

RFC's insistence on dedicated, one-per-missile control links if your talking about FTL controls. FTL control links are mass and volume intensive, hence the size of Keyhole II platforms.

Weird Harold wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:...what stops a Sag-C or Roland from communicating with an ACM anyway? ...

Nothing if you're talking about light-speed control links.

RFC's insistence on dedicated, one-per-missile control links if your talking about FTL controls. FTL control links are mass and volume intensive, hence the size of Keyhole II platforms.

Nope, referring to FTL. The reason -- as I understand it -- that Keyhole is necessary is to get the FTL signal free of wedge interference in "battle mode". Granted, that will change if/when some other navy has 30MM or longer ranged missiles, but in the for now...,, if the Sag-C or Roland isn't wedge on to the enemy but "throat on", --which they can do now with "off bore missile firing" and limpeted pods -- there should be NO interference in that plane. Perhaps that pushes the Mark-16's useful range out to 45MM km, etc. with the ballistic phase built in.

In that next threat environment where even that extended range isn't far enough, it might only be useful in the opening salvos (before the enemy's attack missiles force the wedge roll) but I'm sure any commander or captain would love to have the higher percentage of hits in those starting salvos, even if they can't use the FTL link later on.

Plus this is supposed to be an "ACM-B" which has been deliberately altered to make it more useful to ALL ships.

SharkHunter wrote:Nope, referring to FTL. The reason -- as I understand it -- that Keyhole is necessary is to get the FTL signal free of wedge interference in "battle mode". Granted, that will change if/when some other navy has 30MM or longer ranged missiles, but in the for now...,, if the Sag-C or Roland isn't wedge on to the enemy but "throat on", --which they can do now with "off bore missile firing" and limpeted pods -- there should be NO interference in that plane. Perhaps that pushes the Mark-16's useful range out to 45MM km, etc. with the ballistic phase built in.

In that next threat environment where even that extended range isn't far enough, it might only be useful in the opening salvos (before the enemy's attack missiles force the wedge roll) but I'm sure any commander or captain would love to have the higher percentage of hits in those starting salvos, even if they can't use the FTL link later on.

Plus this is supposed to be an "ACM-B" which has been deliberately altered to make it more useful to ALL ships.

The way David has things set up at the moment, you will ALWAYS need Keyholes to control missile FTL links. Ther is no "Battle mode" - for misisle control it's all the time. So without an FTL equipped Keyhole, there is no FTL communications with an ACM. BCs can't do it, CA's can't do it DDs and CLs can't do it - only SDs equiped with KH2 modules can talk to missiles via FTL.

Lesser ships need to use the RF based control links.

Theemile wrote:The way David has things set up at the moment, you will ALWAYS need Keyholes to control missile FTL links. Ther is no "Battle mode" - for misisle control it's all the time. So without an FTL equipped Keyhole, there is no FTL communications with an ACM. BCs can't do it, CA's can't do it DDs and CLs can't do it - only SDs equiped with KH2 modules can talk to missiles via FTL.

Lesser ships need to use the RF based control links.

But he hasn't really explained why lesser ships can use "onboard" FTL for video-chat to each other, or via Hermes bouys, but only "offboard" Keyhole II seems to work for ACMs.

We've made guesses, but that's all they are.
(But it does seem that even a pair of FTL fire-control links on a CA or BC could give a hell of a long range advantage with Apollo pods. Especially if you used a whole squadron to gang up on targets one-by-one)

--snipping--

Theemile wrote:The way David has things set up at the moment, you will ALWAYS need Keyholes to control missile FTL links. Ther is no "Battle mode" - for misisle control it's all the time. So without an FTL equipped Keyhole, there is no FTL communications with an ACM. BCs can't do it, CA's can't do it DDs and CLs can't do it - only SDs equiped with KH2 modules can talk to missiles via FTL.

Lesser ships need to use the RF based control links.

Ah yes, but that's thinking like RFC. The MWW part of David's talent team now includes BuNine, which has to have a profound affect on changes to future battle tactics.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to think like Shannon Foraker. As an author when I'm working on adult fiction, I always assume my characters are smarter than I am in their own genre(s). For example, I hope my characters will 'advise me' relative to WW2 infantry tactics, estate sales, and other elements in one book, psych treatment and legal bits for troubled kids in another. Then of course I research the heck out of it and talk to folks in the know in the meantime.

A Foraker-style solution might be a smaller RMN ship puts a halo of recon drones around itself, wedge on to the battle space. Now you've got FTL outside the wedge, and those drones obviously have the capacity to communicate to the ships from uber distances away..., so switch the direction of the link to point downrange...

It's not a single Keyhole controlling a huge set of missiles and pods, it's a drone array being used to update two or three control missiles. That's would accomplish "keyhole lite", if there's our notional ACM-B out there to receive the command orders. Something like 'target 1 destroyed, switch to target 2' or "AQ-17", "ship 2 using ECW X" would be what, a few byte command sequence?

Jonathan_S wrote:But he hasn't really explained why lesser ships can use "onboard" FTL for video-chat to each other, or via Hermes bouys, but only "offboard" Keyhole II seems to work for ACMs.

SharkHunter wrote:Ah yes, but that's thinking like RFC. ...

The fact that RFC/MWW/DW has set up his technology such that Missiles are "virtual TOW missiles" where one-and-only-one control channel controls them from launch to attack maneuver is simply a fact of life in the Honorverse. Until he provides some revolutionary change in that stricture, speculation has to take that stricture into account. RDs (and, according to Capt Zavala, Hermes Buoys deployed by Rolands,) can't talk to missiles.

The fact that even 1940's holllywood movie stars could come up with a better system is irrelevant.

SharkHunter wrote:Plus this is supposed to be an "ACM-B" which has been deliberately altered to make it more useful to ALL ships.

An ACM doesn't need to be deliberately altered to make it more useful, the SHIPs would have to be altered with at least one FTL attack missile fire-control link.

What I referred to as an "ACM-B" was one modified with more control links from the ACM to its brood -- allowing each ACM-B to control more than eight attack missiles. In practice, each ACM's brood is eight Mk-23D missiles, but there is no textev I know of that would preclude pairing with Mk-16s or any other RMN attack missile -- including an ACM

Perhaps it isn't necessary to modify an ACM if they can indeed be "daisy-chained" so that one ship-board fire-control link can control an entire missile swarm.