Training Standards (Limited to the Honorverse)

Personally, I suspect that powered armor does not really pertain to this discussion, as would probably be classified less as infantry and more as a light vehicle. Maintenance and supply have a lot more in comon with a small fighting vehicle than a grunt, and tactics would be significantly different depending on if you are in powered armor verses un-powered armor or skin suits.

You guys are overlooking a few things, like the effect of counter-grav would have on infantry operations. If your backpack has a counter-grav unit on it you could carry all sorts of stuff. Look at the raid on camp Freedom the RMMC used what was effectively counter-grav parachutes. Plus look at the various genetic variations of people in the Honorverse Matao is 2.7x stronger than a person from Manticore and twice as strong as a person from Sphinx.

saber964 wrote:You guys are overlooking a few things, like the effect of counter-grav would have on infantry operations. If your backpack has a counter-grav unit on it you could carry all sorts of stuff. Look at the raid on camp Freedom the RMMC used what was effectively counter-grav parachutes. Plus look at the various genetic variations of people in the Honorverse Matao is 2.7x stronger than a person from Manticore and twice as strong as a person from Sphinx.

There are cetainly situations where counter-grav helps. But I'm not sure it's a universal advantage for infantry.

That would depend on:
a) How much power does it take to operate?
It's one thing to use it for a few minutes as a parachute substitute; or a climbing aid. It's another to lighten a pack for hours or days on end.

b) How much all that mass messes up your mobility?
Countergrav gets rid of the weight, but the mass is still there and it's just as hard to start, stop, or turn that mass as it would be w/o countergrav. You can probably easily adjust to a 60kg pack only 'weighing' 30kg; but go overboard and countergrav a 600kg pack down to 30kg and it's probably a far different story.

c) How detectable the counter-grav and/or its power source is? Not a huge deal for a smash down the door drop, as the speed of attack means the enemy has little time to notice or react to any detection of coutergrav. But if (for example) a steady use of counter-grav's to lighten a pack could be detected from 20km away then it's useless in many situations.



All that said, there would still be many situations where counter-grav (and handheld tractor-pressor units) would remove a lot of the raw muscle strength needed for things like damage control parties, or moving resupply pallets.

Jonathan_S wrote:

saber964 wrote:You guys are overlooking a few things, like the effect of counter-grav would have on infantry operations. If your backpack has a counter-grav unit on it you could carry all sorts of stuff. Look at the raid on camp Freedom the RMMC used what was effectively counter-grav parachutes. Plus look at the various genetic variations of people in the Honorverse Matao is 2.7x stronger than a person from Manticore and twice as strong as a person from Sphinx.

There are cetainly situations where counter-grav helps. But I'm not sure it's a universal advantage for infantry.

That would depend on:
a) How much power does it take to operate?
It's one thing to use it for a few minutes as a parachute substitute; or a climbing aid. It's another to lighten a pack for hours or days on end.

b) How much all that mass messes up your mobility?
Countergrav gets rid of the weight, but the mass is still there and it's just as hard to start, stop, or turn that mass as it would be w/o countergrav. You can probably easily adjust to a 60kg pack only 'weighing' 30kg; but go overboard and countergrav a 600kg pack down to 30kg and it's probably a far different story.

c) How detectable the counter-grav and/or its power source is? Not a huge deal for a smash down the door drop, as the speed of attack means the enemy has little time to notice or react to any detection of coutergrav. But if (for example) a steady use of counter-grav's to lighten a pack could be detected from 20km away then it's useless in many situations.



All that said, there would still be many situations where counter-grav (and handheld tractor-pressor units) would remove a lot of the raw muscle strength needed for things like damage control parties, or moving resupply pallets.

The personal grav belts that Stephanie Harrington (the one that discovered treecats) used while hang-gliding would lift a whole person with their glider upto 100m into the air, and hold them there. Couple other occasions both in the Friendship books, and Honor's disdain of them (both at the Academy and after newly acquiring LaFollet), we can figure they don't really use much power, nor are they very bulky. I think the exact description of them is basically a slightly larger utility belt, so say the Storm Trooper belts, on the Death Star (when Luke and Leia swung across the gap).

Since it's approximately belt-sized, detection of that would likely require being under 500m away, which is within pulse pistol range, let alone a pulse rifle.


On the other hand, I don't believe that infantry use those belts at all, or at least not Solarian Marines. Thandi explained to Victor, exactly how much weight she had to carry into battle, and that she carried "extra weight" in the form of the extra rations that she, personally, required to stay on combat ops.

With both the assault on Camp Freedom, and the Stilty nomad defence, both ops had plans for spare power to re-supply the powered armor. And skinsuits are "unpowered" essentially, they don't assist the users movements at all. So any power is strictly for their HUDs, radios, and helmet lamps. Those are low-power draw, and unless pulse rifles keep their batteries in the magazines, the Stilty Defense had Captain Ramirez "use" upwards of 4 magazines and didn't once need to change out the power supply that pulser pistols/rifles seem to require.

Recall at Marsh, against Warnecke, Honor's trick case only had a 12 volt power supply, which after a scan had the pilot remark "12v battery, not nearly enough for a pulse pistol"

SharkHunter wrote:Given that another thread on this subject went bad in a hurry, but started with an interesting "Honorverse" question, I'd like to restart the thought processes on training standards with an assertion, and see where it goes.

Given the variability of humans in the HonorVerse, [consider Palane and HH compared to Susan Hibson or Iris Babcock, or Hugh Arai, Tomas Martinez or Mateo Gutierrez compared to just about anybody else], it's obvious that brute strength isn't the comparative limiting factor on who joins, who washes out, an who stays. It's also obvious that "smart and willing to be deadly" are core requirements.

So what creates the "low bar" for entry/washout and what separates the accepted into further training from the wannabees, and thence up to "first tier" level in terms of unit fighting skills?

I suspect in the Honorverse that coordination and kinesthetics (I think that is the word altho I may have spelled it wrong )
would play a large part of who is "first tier" and who isn't.
You would be working in varying gravities. Powered armor will even out most physical differences ( tho the smaller person is still a smaller target ).
The ability to multi-task will also come in handy.
You've got all the sensor feeds to pay attention to and sorting out what is important from all of them will be crucial.

Somtaaw wrote:unless pulse rifles keep their batteries in the magazines, the Stilty Defense had Captain Ramirez "use" upwards of 4 magazines and didn't once need to change out the power supply that pulser pistols/rifles seem to require.

Recall at Marsh, against Warnecke, Honor's trick case only had a 12 volt power supply, which after a scan had the pilot remark "12v battery, not nearly enough for a pulse pistol"

Following down this tangent -- unless the power supply for a pulser/pulse rifle is basically 'lifetime' I imagine that you would want to integrate them into the magazines (or ideally built into the rounds (not the dart, but the packaging around/with the dart) themselves. But even with Honorverse tech a lifetime power supply, or squeezing the power supply for a round into the packaging around that round, are both probably impractical.

But if you need a 'battery' in the gun then you run the risk of running out of power before you run out of 'bullets'. Where-as if its in the detachable magazines then if one magazine's battery fails (or never got charged when the mag was reloaded) you can just drop it and insert another.

Plus ammo resupply (presuming it come pre-loaded into magazines) automatically includes fresh power.

<shrug - but who knows if that's right>

Somtaaw wrote:And skinsuits are "unpowered" essentially, they don't assist the users movements at all. So any power is strictly for their HUDs, radios, and helmet lamps. Those are low-power draw, and unless pulse rifles keep their batteries in the magazines, the Stilty Defense had Captain Ramirez "use" upwards of 4 magazines and didn't once need to change out the power supply that pulser pistols/rifles seem to require.

No, they have a low grade power assist. And things like maintaining a breathable atmosphere in the suit will take power. Fans, computers, valves, etc.

Counter grav belts to suit cases, psuits, mech suits, grav guns, skin suits are all able to exist for one reason only: Power Density undreamed of today regarding their batteries.

Same reason human flight did not exist until the Wright Brothers. The Wright Brothers are credited as the inventor of the airplane because they solved several things. Power, Lift, and Control. Others before them had partially figured out lift though it took the Wright Brothers to invent the wind tunnel, but NO ONE solved power or control. They built their own engine. Since then WWI, WWII, till today, the history of the airplane is intrinsically tied to power generation.

One of the major reasons the Germans and Japanesse lost the war. They did not develop powerful enough engines soon enough. The Germans had the Battle of Briton won with their superior aircraft other than the fact they did not have a powerful enough engine on their Me109 severely castrating the plane to a miniscule range. The Brits were ok with their own castrated airplanes as they were on defense with strategic depth.

The severe lack of range on the Germans part of their Me109 essentially lost both the Battles of Britain and Stalingrad and the whole Eastern Front as their fighters had to be based so close to the front lines that the enemy knew where they were and in many cases could shell the fields with artillery without sending in fighters or bombers. This effectively eliminated the Stutka dive bomber from the field of battle without horrendous losses destroying the Germans ability for Blitzkrieg(joint air/ground AKA modern warfare).

This limitation effectively made reconnaissance impossible as German recon birds were SLOW and got shot down with impunity. Contrast this with the Western front where Mosquitos, P51's, P38's flew recon with impunity for the most part. All of these planes early war recon expertise were made possible due to power density. True, by wars end, their speed/range was not exceptional, but when first introduced they were. Power density allowed the Hellcat to dominate the pacific as it was able to carry armor and take off from a carrier whereas the zero could not.

Today, power density in batteries allows everyone to run around with what used to be called a super computer tucked away in everyone's pocket and purse.

Sure there were other breakthroughs to make all of the above possible, but none of it would have amounted to anything if it was not for iterative jumps in power density.

The Honorvese has mind boggling high power density batteries.

In fact, if anyone ever picks up an Aeronautics book, an entire chapter or two is completely devoted to calculating distance range all from power density/efficiency. Usually the chapter right before one gets into rocketry. Occasionally one can "cheat" around the equations, but only by a small fraction.

Right now, earth is limited to the power density of Diesel/Kerosene fuel.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:unless pulse rifles keep their batteries in the magazines, the Stilty Defense had Captain Ramirez "use" upwards of 4 magazines and didn't once need to change out the power supply that pulser pistols/rifles seem to require.

Recall at Marsh, against Warnecke, Honor's trick case only had a 12 volt power supply, which after a scan had the pilot remark "12v battery, not nearly enough for a pulse pistol"

Following down this tangent -- unless the power supply for a pulser/pulse rifle is basically 'lifetime' I imagine that you would want to integrate them into the magazines (or ideally built into the rounds (not the dart, but the packaging around/with the dart) themselves. But even with Honorverse tech a lifetime power supply, or squeezing the power supply for a round into the packaging around that round, are both probably impractical.

But if you need a 'battery' in the gun then you run the risk of running out of power before you run out of 'bullets'. Where-as if its in the detachable magazines then if one magazine's battery fails (or never got charged when the mag was reloaded) you can just drop it and insert another.

Plus ammo resupply (presuming it come pre-loaded into magazines) automatically includes fresh power.

<shrug - but who knows if that's right>

In Jayne's the power supply is either in the Mag or separate for larger, "crew served" weapons. Power armor blurs those size definitions, but there is always a detatchable mag/power supply in Military weaps in RMN and Havenite use.

However, I could see Civilian Pulsers having an internal, non-removable powersupply - specifically to limit their use and capabilities.

Theemile wrote:

In Jayne's the power supply is either in the Mag or separate for larger, "crew served" weapons. Power armor blurs those size definitions, but there is always a detatchable mag/power supply in Military weaps in RMN and Havenite use.

However, I could see Civilian Pulsers having an internal, non-removable powersupply - specifically to limit their use and capabilities.

Thanks, I didn't think to look there.

And I wouldn't be surprised if there were places that limited civilian models like that. But I'd be pretty surprised if Manticore was one of them. (Now there might well be less expensive fixed power versions for sale on Manticore, but I'd think that if so that's because there's a market demand for them. Not because there'd be regulations, there, around swappable power)