Jonathan_S wrote:There have also been a couple minor examples that show that not even SLN bureaucracy can prevent some good things from making it through R&D and out into the fleet.
To be fair, they're not actually trying to do that. But the League government gets a pittance of the wealth of the League, and the SLN gets a pittance of that pittance. It's not needed more for centuries, what with no wars to fight.
The R&D establishment "just" suffers from no direction based on perceived or experienced need, in addition to the corruption of the League bureaucracy. The only natural product of SLN R&D has been incremental improvements of a decades-old tactical model. They're slowly feeling out the implications of these new-fangled laserheads.
If not for having actual enemies, it'd be a perfectly rational approach.
The numbers Duckk gave for the Javelin based Cataphract 1st stage show that the SLN's shipkillers have about a 3.5% accel advantage over any shipkiller we've seen out of Manticore or Haven. Now those are SDMs, not even ERMs much less MDMs. But once League R&D cracks (or steal) the baffle trick to enable true MDMs they can build missiles that, by my calculations, would have almost an extra 2.3 million km of continuously powered range compared to Mk23s. Or put another way, they'd reach the 65.7 million km max range of the Mk23 about 9 seconds faster than a Mk23 could.
Of course without microfusion power they'd have far less power for ECM than dazzlers and dragon's teeth; and without Apollo they'd have far less accuracy at those kinds of ranges than Manticore. But still an example of where SLN is ahead in based missile drive-node tech.
Right. But by the same token, there's a whole constellation of technologies there, integrated into a whole fighting doctrine. If the SLN can't get almost all of them,
and adjust their tactics to them,
and get it all deployed in short order, they won't have the time to at all.
And in the meantime, the GA isn't sitting on its hands and the Alignment isn't interested in letting the League survive. They're not exactly working together by a long chalk, but they're both committed to tearing the League apart and they both know very well that the sheer stupendous wealth and population of the League could crush them
if the League were given the breathing space somehow to get its act together.
Also if I recall correctly knowledgable Manties thought well of the basic hardware of the SLN's new Halo EMC/decoy platforms. The software was garbage, which let the idea down, but the basic engineering and inherent capabilites were inovative and potentially up there with Haven sector tractored platforms (though probably not up with Manticore's newest free-flying Lorelie decoys)
Right. The power budgets just aren't sufficient. But within the limitations of the power regime, and discounting the software (which really hurts when they haven't been able to take the Haven Wars reports seriously), it's fine stuff. Unfortunately, warfare doesn't grade on that sort of curve.
So their tech isn't all one-shot ideas or dead ends getting unloaded on unsuspecting Verge navies; some of it is quite good. And who knows what toys are still sitting back in the R&D labs that haven't gotten authorization to be deployed to the fleet.
Given the conservatism of the SLN's R&D establishment, the things that aren't either (1) incremental improvements based on either classic doctrine or half-believed underestimates of Haven Sector warfare or (2) one-shot ideas or dead-ends (SLN grav lance CL's, for instance, or Charles' wares), are probably far, far from production, just because it's only lately that anyone would have been taking them seriously.
There's a fourth category though, already featured in some recent posts: hopeful one-shots, the weird stuff that just
may fit into some coherent, effective doctrine. Even those though could be anywhere in a slow research-to-use cycle, and they are not likely to work out well until they can fit into a complete, coherent doctrine, which doesn't come quickly. And the SLN has no institutional experience of developing that in a hurry, while they are absolutely in a hurried condition.
If, if, if... if the League could put the GA and Alignment in stasis bubbles for five years, they could whomp them when the five years is up. Alas for the Mandarins, they can't.
That said, it's going to take a new generation of SDs to really take advantage of the that new tech, and to handle the radically altered combat environment; and that should take years to design and build. Years they're unlikely to have.
Indeed. Oh, some of those weird things may be suitable for faster building and delivery, but the weirder they are, the longer it'll take to develop the production lines for them and (especially) the tactics to use them, so time is the killer there too.
