Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

Rakhmamort wrote:

Theemile wrote:To add to SWM's point, as other have snippeted above, the financial situation caused by Manticore means that the SLN is financially unable to reactivate ships enmass from the Reserve and unable to pay for the sailors necessary to man them. It is not merely political will to increase the fleet size, but also financial constraits.

They aren't reactivating ships of the wall for combat against the alliance. Pirates wouldn't know the SD that just lit up its drives are undermanned and does not pose any harm to them.

It's really easy to 'defend' against pirates, just tell the merchant ships to enter the systems they are visiting from system north, the guard ship will be posted there and they will be safe. If there are a lot of pirates in the area, most merchantmen would prefer to be safe than save up on node maintenance. Those that don't jump in the safe zone and get whacked gambled and lost, simple as that.

They aren't reactivating any ships from the Reserve Fleet for any reason. We have explicit textev. You keep trying to use ships that the Sollies don't have available and won't get.

kzt wrote:Just a couple of general notes on the whole concept I'm proposing:

I believe David intends for hyper-ambushes to be really, really rare. So while the whole "wait for the merchant on Alpha" concept is something I'm personally proud of I don't think it will actually happen in the books.

I think we should also remember that those early hyper interceptions were the product of years of planning, spying, and surviellance by the PRH. The PRN may have followed multiple convoys point to point over the years perfecting their plans to pounce, mapping those grav eddies which they could hide in and watch for passing conyoys.

Meanwhile, their penetration agents could have been feeding them info on ship movements and shipping schedules while their stealthed platforms plotted the comings and goings. If so, they had noticed any routines and were ready, when the moment was right, to jump on everything they could.

...And for every convoy they hit, how many did they miss, despite the planning - we'll never know.

Now the SLN will have none of this. Much of their system plots may be out of date and intel stale - because this isn't what they do day to day, they have no organic intel sources inserted to feed them, and have had no prep time with the rapid change of events.

So hyper interceptions my be really rare in this war.

Weird Harold wrote:

Bill Woods wrote:Mind you, I didn't hear an explanation why a Ghostrider recon platform, near the target, couldn't relay messages sent via FTL comm from the launching ship to the incoming missiles, giving essentially the same performance.

That explanation has been given several times: Recon Drones don't have fire-control channels and don't have nearly enough comm channels to control hundred of missiles.

What does a 'fire-control channel' have that can't be duplicated by a drone's comm laser transmitting commands and information from the launching ship? And control missiles only control their ten-ish podmates, not hundreds of missiles.

Bill Woods wrote:What does a 'fire-control channel' have that can't be duplicated by a drone's comm laser transmitting commands and information from the launching ship? And control missiles only control their ten-ish podmates, not hundreds of missiles.

A Hermes Buoy can apparently talk to a couple of Apollo pods worth of ACMs. Hermes Buoys can't talk to an entire missile storm of ACMS or Missiles. There is no evidence that Recon Drones can talk to missiles at all.

Fire Control channels almost certainly have encrytpion to keep standard comm channels from hacking into missile control channels, and each Fire Control Channel talks to one (and normally only one) missile or ACM. That is the restriction that RFC has put on control of missiles and the reason that warships have dozens or hundred of dedicated fire control channels

Bill Woods wrote:What does a 'fire-control channel' have that can't be duplicated by a drone's comm laser transmitting commands and information from the launching ship? And control missiles only control their ten-ish podmates, not hundreds of missiles.

Whatever RFC says cuz... otherwise a rational being using basic communications sees only:

A whole bunch of stupidisms that do not come even close to reality.

Bandwidth per channel is completely missing.
Also: For instance one would not even need to encrypt your missile data streams. Doppler shift takes care of that.

crewdude48 wrote:Actually, I think they are building it or something like it. I don't know what the exact Keyhole-lite's specifications are but it is supposed to be something like Apollo for lighter combatants. It might be possible that the K-lite control missile might have FTL receiving capabilities too.

Keyhole has nothing to do with the Apollo (or any other) Control Missile. The Keyhole is basically a combination of an electronic warfare platform and a fire control relay platform. It allows a warship to sit with their wedge directly between them and the enemy with out losing either sensor coverage of the target or communications with the missiles.
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Huh? If you don't need Keyhole II to use Apollo's FTL control links, then how come home fleet got clobbered in the First Battle of Manticore? Keyhole platforms are your FTL control links plus active and passive defenses.

I have found this post in the Pearls where RFC talks about the Roland fighting far above it weight class. Spicificly:

The Rolands were designed to fit a very specific tactical and strategic niche. They were also very deliberately designed not to fit other tactical and strategic niches. They are the fleet's new-generation destroyer, and one of the considerations that went into their design was the identification of capabilities which had to be left out in order to keep them from being pressed into roles for which they were never intended. There is no way that BuShips is going to go back and look at ways to cram in the very sorts of capabilities they very carefully designed out.

They are not going to be fighting squadrons of BCs; and if you think that there might be squadrons of BCs in the area, and you have something there that prevents your ships from just running, you defend it with more than one Roland.

And how would you know there would be squadrons of BCs prowling around? One of your convoys would need to be attacked first. That wouldn't even give you the info that the enemy is operating in that strength against a convoy. It might be possible the whole raider force happened into that particular convoy just when they reached their operating area. You'll need one or two more 'incidents' to be able to conclude that they are operating in squadron sized forces.

The fact that for you to know, it is required that at least one ship survive from the said convoy/s. If the raiding force takes out the entire convoy, then you have zero knowledge who the raiders are or what size of force was used to swat your convoy out.

Weird Harold wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Given the destructive power of a Mod-G warhead, I can see where a mix of one Dazzler, three Dragon's Teeth, and eight Attack Missiles might be a better tactical choice than emptying the entire magazine in one salvo. That probably wouldn't obliterate even a Solarian BC, but it should at least give a BC second thoughts and mission-kill anything smaller.

You highlighted the wrong part of that quote.

No I didn't. The one you put in red simply tried to support your 12-missile salvo's capability to penetrate a BC Squadron's defenses.

3 BCs swatted 30 missiles out of a 35 missile salvo with the same number of Dazzler/DT missiles embedded in it. What makes it possible for a 12-missile salvo to get through 8 BCs' defensive fire?

Rakhmamort wrote:3 BCs swatted 30 missiles out of a 35 missile salvo with the same number of Dazzler/DT missiles embedded in it. What makes it possible for a 12-missile salvo to get through 8 BCs' defensive fire?

I think the improved performance of BCs at Monica might be to do with them starting at a much lower range - thus not allowing Terekhov's Mk16s to get full usage out of their drives and increasing the interception window for the Monicans.

It may also indicate that even something like the Republic of Monica Navy has personnel better trained than the SLN. Certainly, the Monican Commodore seemed to be considered the best flag officer in that navy - he'd have first choice of tactical personnel.

But the largest shift of all was the Battle of New Tuscany with the capture of a whole bunch of SLN battlecruisers, two of which were sent back to Manticore for ONI to pick apart, with 10th Fleet doing some of the initial analysis. They were able to map the SLN's EW and ECM systems inside-out, forwards and backwards and any other combination of directions you'd care to name. Subsequently, the RMN was able to program their missiles to maximise their effects against SLN hardware and programming.

At Monica, it was the RMN's first time up against those systems in such quality and quantity, with at least some competence and training behind them.

Remember what Rafe Cardones pulled off when he realised Saladin's EW systems were resetting to the same start point in 2nd Yeltsin? Well, this is several magnitudes worse than that. You don't need to imagine what he'd be able to do after a few weeks running around inside the BC playing with its tactical systems because that's what happened in every post-New Tuscany engagement.

munroburton wrote:
I think the improved performance of BCs at Monica might be to do with them starting at a much lower range - thus not allowing Terekhov's Mk16s to get full usage out of their drives and increasing the interception window for the Monicans.

It may also indicate that even something like the Republic of Monica Navy has personnel better trained than the SLN. Certainly, the Monican Commodore seemed to be considered the best flag officer in that navy - he'd have first choice of tactical personnel.

But the largest shift of all was the Battle of New Tuscany with the capture of a whole bunch of SLN battlecruisers, two of which were sent back to Manticore for ONI to pick apart, with 10th Fleet doing some of the initial analysis. They were able to map the SLN's EW and ECM systems inside-out, forwards and backwards and any other combination of directions you'd care to name. Subsequently, the RMN was able to program their missiles to maximise their effects against SLN hardware and programming.

At Monica, it was the RMN's first time up against those systems in such quality and quantity, with at least some competence and training behind them.

Remember what Rafe Cardones pulled off when he realised Saladin's EW systems were resetting to the same start point in 2nd Yeltsin? Well, this is several magnitudes worse than that. You don't need to imagine what he'd be able to do after a few weeks running around inside the BC playing with its tactical systems because that's what happened in every post-New Tuscany engagement.

Also, while the Indefatigable-class BC's at Monica were a generation older than the SLN's newest (Nevada-class), they'd just gotten a fairly extensive refit.

Supposedly the reason was to disguise the ships' origins. But while the refit was carried out in Monica yards, it was heavily assisted by Technodyne reps provided as part of the MAlign's plot. To make them more effective in that role it's not implausible that those BCs got upgrades to make their point defense much more effective than FF standard - even though they lack the Halo of the newer Nevadas.


After all we know from the attack on Torch that the software used to drive the CMs and PDLCs was so bad that a group of ex-State Sec ship thugs were able to get major improvements just from effectively doing a bit of cut & paste from pre-ceasefire Havenite PD software -- and that's before you touch hardware.


Between that and the points you raised, it certainly seems conceivable that Monica represents a defensive anomaly; compared to what we'd expect to see out of SLN forces in the near-term.

Rakhmamort wrote:Huh? If you don't need Keyhole II to use Apollo's FTL control links, then how come home fleet got clobbered in the First Battle of Manticore?

That would be the fire control relay part of the platform that I mentioned. If you could fit a FTL com into each attack missiles, you could use it that way. Keyhole one did not have any control missiles. As I said, designing a "Keyhole Light" for small boys does not imply in any way, shape, or form designing a control missile.

Rakhmamort wrote:Keyhole platforms are your FTL control links plus active and passive defenses.

That is what I said. Keyhole is not a control missile.

Rakhmamort wrote:And how would you know there would be squadrons of BCs prowling around? One of your convoys would need to be attacked first. That wouldn't even give you the info that the enemy is operating in that strength against a convoy. It might be possible the whole raider force happened into that particular convoy just when they reached their operating area. You'll need one or two more 'incidents' to be able to conclude that they are operating in squadron sized forces.

The fact that for you to know, it is required that at least one ship survive from the said convoy/s. If the raiding force takes out the entire convoy, then you have zero knowledge who the raiders are or what size of force was used to swat your convoy out.

You still seemed to have missed the part of the Pearl where David Weber said "The Rolands were designed to fit a very specific tactical and strategic niche. They were also very deliberately designed not to fit other tactical and strategic niches." They very specifically DO NOT WANT a Roland to be able to take on a half squadron of BCs by it self.