tech gap

saber964 wrote:

That happens more than you might think, especially in law enforcement. There was a case in Texas where the DEA busted a joint FBI TexSP TexRanger drug operation. It IIRC blew a 2 year investigation.

Or How about the "Red Mercury" Scare in the 90s. Multiple years of investigations by just about every country in the world's security agencies in trying to stop the sale of a "lost" Russian Nuclear secret, only to find that everybody selling Red Mercury was either a low level criminal informant trying to make a buck by selling the name of someone who had it for sale or an undercover counter-terrorist agency trying to bust someone trying to buy nuclear materials.

Somtaaw wrote:I'm not quite so sure about Charles being some form of Manticoran alphabet soup agency type.

Somewhere, there would have been a memo sent up the chain, and then passed in a very low method to the top of ONI, that the Crippler program was being "sold" to the Peeps, and not to interfere. From head of ONI (then, Admiral Givens), it would have been quietly whispered in Hemphill's ear, not to interfere with it, when she reported the Peeps were experimenting with some form of super weapon. Or at least to not assign a good team, to minimize "time wasted".

Instead, Hemphill assigned one of her crack problem solving teams to the issue, and totally went about trying to observe and potentially steal the weapon. And Hemphill of all people, should have known the limitations of the grav lance. After all, she was the one who originally pioneered it's research when she was still only a Commander, assigned to Project Gram. Which is also why she poached Rafe Cardones off Honor, and put one of said crack problem solving team in his place.


On the other hand, Sonja was involved ridiculously early in "solving" the Crippler problem. 1902 PD, a bunch of merchies get taken, and they call in the head of the Weapons Development Board to solve the problem. 1908 PD, a bunch of merchies being taken, and they yawn, shrug, and send off the Armed Merchant Cruisers... and even sending that took the direct arm twisting by Klaus Hauptmann. The circumstances were near identical, and almost no reaction from BuWeaps, BuShips, or WDB. It was barely a blip on their radars (or should I say scanners?)

Somtaaw - not always the case.
Those dreaded phrases "Need to know" and "operational security"
come into play and common sense goes right out the window.
Then once Givens/Hemphill get involved everyone involved goes into"Maximum CYA Mode".
Look up the recent "Gunrunner" debacle.

The power of plot.

Somtaaw wrote:
On the other hand, Sonja was involved ridiculously early in "solving" the Crippler problem. 1902 PD, a bunch of merchies get taken, and they call in the head of the Weapons Development Board to solve the problem. 1908 PD, a bunch of merchies being taken, and they yawn, shrug, and send off the Armed Merchant Cruisers... and even sending that took the direct arm twisting by Klaus Hauptmann. The circumstances were near identical, and almost no reaction from BuWeaps, BuShips, or WDB. It was barely a blip on their radars (or should I say scanners?)

the biggest difference in the time frames is that at the time of the first incident they were not actively at war, while during the second they were pressing hard to secure trevor's star while not losing ground anywhere else

Dauntless wrote:a manty from some obscure agency? interesting idea, i'm not completely sold. then again i'm not completely sold abut any of the ideas. we just have too little info to make anything more then a guess

I think that Charles was simply a huckster who managed to steal failed ideas from corporate shops in the SLN to pedal to places like Haven who were deserate to improve their situaton...

One houdini of an escape artist, though.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Dauntless wrote:a manty from some obscure agency? interesting idea, i'm not completely sold. then again i'm not completely sold abut any of the ideas. we just have too little info to make anything more then a guess

I think that Charles was simply a huckster who managed to steal failed ideas from corporate shops in the SLN to pedal to places like Haven who were deserate to improve their situaton...

One houdini of an escape artist, though.

Don

"Who is Charles" is one of the more interesting loose end in the Honorverse. When Tim Zahn has finished Manticore Asc. he can come back to that (it is his figure after all - input from RFC not withstanding)

The people we have been shown in the eventual RF are all fully bought in members of the Alignment, as least as far as aware of the Alignment and some of the plans. They are also members of either/both the political and military leadership or will soon be. These are NOT people who are going to rise up in protest against this shadowey "Alignment" as bits and pieces of the cover is ripped off.

We don't have any evidence that the RF -when formed eventually- is going to espouse ANY of what the snippets of information uncovered by Haven and Manticore say is going on. RF is conceived and designed to be sets of systems who band together for mutual protection and trade in the face of the SL falling apart and the chaos that is expected to follow. War, piracy, economic deprivation, strangulation of flow of goods and materials between systems. All that good stuff the Alignment sees as ways of DESTROYING THE LEAGUE. At the same time, there will be lots of "little stuff" that goes on -is probably already going on and will grow quietly and without being pointed out- mostly in the medical fields and social sciences as what are Alignment/Detweiler variations on supporting and benifiting the populations. These won't be "improvements", these will be cures and solutions to significant medial problems. Attitudes will be changed.
The RF military- from the inital 11 SDFs through the newly joining members of each RF seed system alliances- will pobably have defeats and gobs of people will be lost (mostly in the non-Alignment components of those forces) and the eventual RF will have to be "against" this Alignment thing while in the background all the systems will be position and manipulated to be implimenting the actual Alignment objectives.
Some day down the years, people will suddenly discover that their children are not, in fact, their biological children at all (or only a little bit) but that it has become an industry that is churing out Alignment Star Lines or workers and enough of the actual control of the systems and their industries and militarys are Alignment that it will not matter that people know the Alignment is in control.

Somtaaw wrote:I'm not quite so sure about Charles being some form of Manticoran alphabet soup agency type.

Somewhere, there would have been a memo sent up the chain, and then passed in a very low method to the top of ONI, that the Crippler program was being "sold" to the Peeps, and not to interfere. From head of ONI (then, Admiral Givens), it would have been quietly whispered in Hemphill's ear, not to interfere with it, when she reported the Peeps were experimenting with some form of super weapon. Or at least to not assign a good team, to minimize "time wasted".

Instead, Hemphill assigned one of her crack problem solving teams to the issue, and totally went about trying to observe and potentially steal the weapon. And Hemphill of all people, should have known the limitations of the grav lance. After all, she was the one who originally pioneered it's research when she was still only a Commander, assigned to Project Gram. Which is also why she poached Rafe Cardones off Honor, and put one of said crack problem solving team in his place.


On the other hand, Sonja was involved ridiculously early in "solving" the Crippler problem. 1902 PD, a bunch of merchies get taken, and they call in the head of the Weapons Development Board to solve the problem. 1908 PD, a bunch of merchies being taken, and they yawn, shrug, and send off the Armed Merchant Cruisers... and even sending that took the direct arm twisting by Klaus Hauptmann. The circumstances were near identical, and almost no reaction from BuWeaps, BuShips, or WDB. It was barely a blip on their radars (or should I say scanners?)

This is an older thread, and I don't have any opinion on "Charles" or where he came from. But I don't think Sonja Hemphill became the head of the Weapons Development Board at that time--not if they posted her to command Grendelsbane two years later, to be the CO there at the start of the war. And, she was still CO of Grendelsbane in IEH, I'm pretty sure. In fact, being the head of the WDB might have been rolled into BuWeaps once Adcock moved over there, and could well have stayed with him until he died.

She got the Crippler job because her version, the Grav Lance, could drop a sidewall; but it could not drop a wedge, and it also could not operate at the reported ranges; so WDB and ONI were both interested.

And, as a side note that is sort of related to that timeframe, I'd also like to get a short story of how, exactly, McKeon managed to so thoroughly ruffle the feathers of that idiot admiral from Cerberus --Styles. Would have had to be around the time McKeon got Troubadour, but before Yeltsin, tright?

Regards,
Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:And, as a side note that is sort of related to that timeframe, I'd also like to get a short story of how, exactly, McKeon managed to so thoroughly ruffle the feathers of that idiot admiral from Cerberus --Styles. Would have had to be around the time McKeon got Troubadour, but before Yeltsin, tright?

Regards,
Rob

I got the impression that incident was some time before OBS. McKeon had been in the Navy for a long time(certainly longer than Honor, creating some initial problems between them). Perhaps they were even shipmates at one point, similar to Elvis Santino and Honor, before either of them even got a command.

Troubadour was stationed in Basilisk after McKeon got her. I suppose it's possible Styles was initially part of the permanent reinforcements to Basilisk Station - and may have expressed displeasure at McKeon for being partly responsible for that reinforcement or made negative comments about the way Harrington behaved as acting station commander.

Purely speculative on both counts, of course.

munroburton wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:And, as a side note that is sort of related to that timeframe, I'd also like to get a short story of how, exactly, McKeon managed to so thoroughly ruffle the feathers of that idiot admiral from Cerberus --Styles. Would have had to be around the time McKeon got Troubadour, but before Yeltsin, tright?

Regards,
Rob

I got the impression that incident was some time before OBS. McKeon had been in the Navy for a long time(certainly longer than Honor, creating some initial problems between them). Perhaps they were even shipmates at one point, similar to Elvis Santino and Honor, before either of them even got a command.

Troubadour was stationed in Basilisk after McKeon got her. I suppose it's possible Styles was initially part of the permanent reinforcements to Basilisk Station - and may have expressed displeasure at McKeon for being partly responsible for that reinforcement or made negative comments about the way Harrington behaved as acting station commander.

Purely speculative on both counts, of course.

Yes, but McKeon was involved in the original testing of the FTL drones. My impression was that that was at Basilisk, just before he got pulled for Yeltsin. But you are quite right, he had lots of time to rile Styles before that. I'd still like to know how.

Regards,

Rob