Could the SLN do this?

Distance is important. Once the Manties manage to get a ghost rider drone close enough to read SLN ship names off their hulls with passive visual sensors like they did to many of the battles, of course they're going to detect any accompanying drones.

But nobody is going to detect drones at 300+ million kilometers. Detection range of drones for the best sensors at more than 10 million kilometers would be unlikely.
Manty sensor tech has advanced by a lot - but even if it is an order of magnitude ahead of where it was in the days of Saint-Just, it then failed to localize drone-style missiles at PDLC ranges, which is a hundred times closer than the 10-million-klick mark.

Which is where the variable output of drone drives comes in. The mistletoe-style drones will simply shut off their drives in the last couple minutes of their approach - i.e. the last 12 million kilometers of distance. 2 minutes for Manty capital ships at no compensator margin is a mere 50.000 kilometers of course change, which is insignificant; the sprint-stage of a Sollie cataphract is a million kilometers so they'd only need 5% of their drive time to reorient for their attack run, saving the rest for maneuvers.





I got no idea if a Sollie would ever think of such an approach. I mean, their R&D already built drone-drive stealth missiles over a decade ago and they, presumably due to Mesan influence, turned the design down and sold it off as useless.

Belial666 wrote:3) Stealthed sollie drones have proven hard to target with long-range point defense in the past - though things might have changed since then.

The stealthed Sollie drones which were a difficult target did not come from the SLN. They were a specialized drone with much lower acceleration and extra stealth capability, and they were never bought by the SLN. The SLN rejected them. Standard Sollie drones are not nearly as difficult to detect.

SWM wrote:

Belial666 wrote:3) Stealthed sollie drones have proven hard to target with long-range point defense in the past - though things might have changed since then.

The stealthed Sollie drones which were a difficult target did not come from the SLN. They were a specialized drone with much lower acceleration and extra stealth capability, and they were never bought by the SLN. The SLN rejected them. Standard Sollie drones are not nearly as difficult to detect.

These drones also did not use active sensors, being able to track a beacon placed aboard their targets. That's the main reason they were so hard to find.

Somehow, I suspect the SLN is going to find it particularly difficult to board GA ships and install such homing beacons.

Belial666 wrote:Well, it was an idea for a relatively cheap way they could have a chance at some damage. it might be more damage than initial estimates for a few reasons, but you're right: the Eridani Edict violation would be a no-no.


BTW, reasons for higher damage:

1) Even at only 5.000 gs, an hour of acceleration would make for really high final speeds.

Accelerating at 5000 gees for 3600 seconds gives a final velocity of 0.5 c (using the relativistic formula), far below missile velocities. And a distance traveled of 294,000,000 km (using the relativistic formula), or over 16 light minutes. That is far far beyond any possible guidance control. In order to give useful guidance to the drones, the distance should be no more than maximum Solarian missile range.

SWM wrote:

Belial666 wrote:Well, it was an idea for a relatively cheap way they could have a chance at some damage. it might be more damage than initial estimates for a few reasons, but you're right: the Eridani Edict violation would be a no-no.


BTW, reasons for higher damage:

1) Even at only 5.000 gs, an hour of acceleration would make for really high final speeds.

Accelerating at 5000 gees for 3600 seconds gives a final velocity of 0.5 c (using the relativistic formula), far below missile velocities.

Nitpicks:
That's slightly higher than the speed of a Mk16 missile --
60 min * 5k gee vs. 6 min * 46k gee.

And a distance traveled of 294,000,000 km (using the relativistic formula), or over 16 light minutes.

Depends on who's measuring the time. One hour by the clock on board the drone gives
distance traveled = 327 e9 m = 18 lt-min.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7150&start=32

The Sollie League Navy COULD do just about anything. Consider the historical parallels just before the USA got into WW2. We were very isolationist. Did not want anything with foreign intanglements.

Then the USA suckered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. In less than 4 years we literally outbuilt the Japanese 50 to one with most of our effort going to Europe to fight Hitlers Germany. Parallels?

The Sollies have over 2000 heavily populated systems. Think about that for a bit. All each system would have to do is get decent modern plans, (MA?) and start building war infrastructure.

The Manties and the GA do not stand a chance. They simply do not have equal industrial infrastructure to even begin to compete with the Sollie League. The Sollies can build anything they want.

That plus the apparent and re accuring theme that the GA would not do the ugly things they would have to do to defeat the Sollies. They would fight war too nicely and they would lose. HB

HB of CJ wrote:The Sollie League Navy COULD do just about anything. Consider the historical parallels just before the USA got into WW2. We were very isolationist. Did not want anything with foreign intanglements.

Then the USA suckered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. In less than 4 years we literally outbuilt the Japanese 50 to one with most of our effort going to Europe to fight Hitlers Germany. Parallels?

The Sollies have over 2000 heavily populated systems. Think about that for a bit. All each system would have to do is get decent modern plans, (MA?) and start building war infrastructure.

The Manties and the GA do not stand a chance. They simply do not have equal industrial infrastructure to even begin to compete with the Sollie League. The Sollies can build anything they want.

That plus the apparent and re accuring theme that the GA would not do the ugly things they would have to do to defeat the Sollies. They would fight war too nicely and they would lose. HB

I find this analogy somewhat ironic. I have often wondered about whether it still holds true. A case could be made that at this current time of 2015, it does not. In fact a case could be made that it is now our ostensible enemy/enemies who could bury us with their production output. (Remember too it was the Germans who often pitted their "quality" against our "quantity" and we know how that turned out).
So, perhaps the SL is still vulnerable in this regard as well. Wealthy nations apparently don't need an economy based on superior industrial output.
So, how many of the SL worlds are in fact industrial producers? It's a real question. Do all worlds have a significant industrial sector or does the SL economy rely more on worlds that specialize?

HB of CJ wrote:The Sollie League Navy COULD do just about anything. Consider the historical parallels just before the USA got into WW2. We were very isolationist. Did not want anything with foreign intanglements.

Then the USA suckered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. In less than 4 years we literally outbuilt the Japanese 50 to one with most of our effort going to Europe to fight Hitlers Germany. Parallels?

The Sollies have over 2000 heavily populated systems. Think about that for a bit. All each system would have to do is get decent modern plans, (MA?) and start building war infrastructure.

The Manties and the GA do not stand a chance. They simply do not have equal industrial infrastructure to even begin to compete with the Sollie League. The Sollies can build anything they want.

That plus the apparent and re accuring theme that the GA would not do the ugly things they would have to do to defeat the Sollies. They would fight war too nicely and they would lose. HB

Your wrong there, by most historians WWII was actually started by the Japanese in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge incident which led shortly to the IJA taking over Manchuria. The U.S. and other nations imposed sanctions on Japan in retaliation. What really hurt Japan was the embargo on oil and scrap metal. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor Japan had only about a 6 to 9 month supply of oil. Also the U.S. government saw it coming as far back as late 1936. In 1935 the battleship Wyoming was decommissioned and turned into a training ship, Arkansas was scheduled to follow early 1937 which never happened, with the battleships New York and Texas following in 38 and 39. These ships were the last twin gunned ships left in the U.S. fleet. At the same time the U.S. started building the North Carolina class in late 1937. Followed by the entire South Dakota class in 1939 and early 1940 all were completed and commissioned by the end of 1942.

npadln wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:The Sollie League Navy COULD do just about anything. Consider the historical parallels just before the USA got into WW2. We were very isolationist. Did not want anything with foreign intanglements.

Then the USA suckered Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor. In less than 4 years we literally outbuilt the Japanese 50 to one with most of our effort going to Europe to fight Hitlers Germany. Parallels?

The Sollies have over 2000 heavily populated systems. Think about that for a bit. All each system would have to do is get decent modern plans, (MA?) and start building war infrastructure.

The Manties and the GA do not stand a chance. They simply do not have equal industrial infrastructure to even begin to compete with the Sollie League. The Sollies can build anything they want.

That plus the apparent and re accuring theme that the GA would not do the ugly things they would have to do to defeat the Sollies. They would fight war too nicely and they would lose. HB

I find this analogy somewhat ironic. I have often wondered about whether it still holds true. A case could be made that at this current time of 2015, it does not. In fact a case could be made that it is now our ostensible enemy/enemies who could bury us with their production output. (Remember too it was the Germans who often pitted their "quality" against our "quantity" and we know how that turned out).
So, perhaps the SL is still vulnerable in this regard as well. Wealthy nations apparently don't need an economy based on superior industrial output.
So, how many of the SL worlds are in fact industrial producers? It's a real question. Do all worlds have a significant industrial sector or does the SL economy rely more on worlds that specialize?

Even today we have an economy based on specialisation. A lot of the things we use are produced in only a couple of countries. This has been a development since WWII.

I would expect that this will be the case in Honorverse to an even greater extent. Interstellar transport is cheap, which would favour specialisation. A consequence of this is that if the transport networks are disturbed (Lacoon II!) production will break down to a large extent. Manticore and Haven are used to being self-sufficient (Manticore since the build up of Roger III). SL do not have any experience of that and who can threaten the SL anyhow...

saber964, Thank you. I was alluding to the entry of WW2 by the USA, not the beginning of the Tojo government of Japan. When the Japanese ran wild in China there was no world war ... yet.

And ... by definition, for a war to be considered to be a world war, nations from all over may be involved. Thus the band wagon after Dec. 1941 when most everybody got involved until VJ day.