How much Technology was Stolen

smr wrote:Sollie Intelligence would have picking over the debris field as soon as they launched a Search and Rescue shuttle. Manuals, computers, missiles, you name it would have picked up and sent on their merry way. So how much was stolen or transferred to the Sollies by the destruction of 3 ships. The info would have stored at the embassy and examples or destroyed examples of technology would have been sent out on freighters. Hard to stop this kinda of actions.

Russia was down in Bosnia (I think) within 8 to 12 hours when they shot a f117 stealth fighter/bomber. China was at the site within 8 to 12 hours after Bin Laden raid to look at the improved stealth blackhawk.

As I said way back when this topic was active, if the SLN had recovered anything worthwhile, how come no one acts like it? Literally zero people on the SLN side act as if they have hard intel on Alliance capabilities. No one on the SLN side at New Tuscany act as if they saw the Alliance's tech before Mike Henke shot down Bing. Even the Frontier Fleet personnel (including Maitland Askew who actually had a clue) all act as if they were completely ignorant of what they were facing. Neither did anyone in Crandall's fleet at Spindle, nor Filaretta's, nor anyone on Earth. If no one is acting like they have this kind of information, then the simplest, most rational explanation is that they don't have it because they never retrieved it.

Unless the destroyers were completely vapourised (which may be possible, I don't have anything like enough physics knowledge to judge whether the energy input from Byng's broadside guns was adequate), then there would surely have to be a recovery operation by either the SLN or the New Tuscans, just to clear the wreckage out of the parking orbits. In that case, my brain rebels at the idea that Byng's staff intelligence officer wouldn't at least want details of what was recovered.

However, even if Byng's ships recovered every last splinter of Chatterjee's force, that doesn't mean that they'd have done any analysis of it. In a fleet as fossilised as the SLN, that analysis would be the responsibility of ONI and jealously guarded, regardless of the actual intel value gained. A fleet unit 'messing around' with the salvage would be likely to kick off a turf war between Battle Fleet and ONI, which wouldn't reflect well on Byng. I think it's very likely that any recovered pieces of Manticoran ships or missiles were sitting, unlooked at, aboard Byng's ships when Mike Henke came over the alpha wall.

Dafmeister wrote:However, even if Byng's ships recovered every last splinter of Chatterjee's force, that doesn't mean that they'd have done any analysis of it. In a fleet as fossilised as the SLN, that analysis would be the responsibility of ONI and jealously guarded, regardless of the actual intel value gained. A fleet unit 'messing around' with the salvage would be likely to kick off a turf war between Battle Fleet and ONI, which wouldn't reflect well on Byng. I think it's very likely that any recovered pieces of Manticoran ships or missiles were sitting, unlooked at, aboard Byng's ships when Mike Henke came over the alpha wall.

I would think that the chance of recovering anything of real value from the wreckage is slim. Those DDs got hit by overwhelming firepower, chances are their magazines and computer cores were ripped apart in the explosion.

And yeah, whatever Byng recovered was likely still with his fleet, given that he didn't send anyone away. So everything he or the locals recovered was either destroyed with his flagship, or confiscated by the RMN.

The E wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:However, even if Byng's ships recovered every last splinter of Chatterjee's force, that doesn't mean that they'd have done any analysis of it. In a fleet as fossilised as the SLN, that analysis would be the responsibility of ONI and jealously guarded, regardless of the actual intel value gained. A fleet unit 'messing around' with the salvage would be likely to kick off a turf war between Battle Fleet and ONI, which wouldn't reflect well on Byng. I think it's very likely that any recovered pieces of Manticoran ships or missiles were sitting, unlooked at, aboard Byng's ships when Mike Henke came over the alpha wall.

I would think that the chance of recovering anything of real value from the wreckage is slim. Those DDs got hit by overwhelming firepower, chances are their magazines and computer cores were ripped apart in the explosion.

And yeah, whatever Byng recovered was likely still with his fleet, given that he didn't send anyone away. So everything he or the locals recovered was either destroyed with his flagship, or confiscated by the RMN.

I am slightly surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that the capacitor rings were also disrupted, releasing however much loose and violent energy . . . but the author was clear enough about no servivors, and I don't think Byng had a staff intelligence officer. Crandall didn't.

YMMV
Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote: I am slightly surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that the capacitor rings were also disrupted, releasing however much loose and violent energy . . . but the author was clear enough about no servivors, and I don't think Byng had a staff intelligence officer. Crandall didn't.

Crandall added FF Commander Hago Shavarshyan to her staff at some point. Oddly enough, Adm. O'Cleary had "My staff intelligence officer, Rear Admiral Lavinia Fairfax." A fairly high rank, considering O'Cleary is only, what, a task group commander? Filareta's intelligence officer is only a commodore.

One should probably note that even if Byng retrieved any debris, and even if his (possible) staff intelligence officer had begun analyzing it, it's by no means clear either that any useful data was retrieved, or that said data was aboard the dispatch boat that made it out. I am also thinking that Byng would have been very unlikely to entrust copies of that data to anybody on-planet given his towering disdain for any non-Solarians.

What are the chances that, given the strong possibility of three or more graser hits on each of the DDs, that the fusion reactor of any given ship lost containment and blew?

In the case of any of the DDs losing containment, that ship would be an expanding ball of plasma. Not much identifiable debris larger than dust, or more likely, just the plasma.

The energy hits themselves might not set off warheads in the magazines. As I understand nuclear weapons, you need to create a critical mass of the fisionable material to get it to actually have a nuclear explosion. Otherwise you spread the material around and contaminate the area but no fashion bomb. The B-47 bomber that dropped a nuclear bomb in South Carolina in 1958 (accidental release of the weapon with no trigger in it) created a massive explosion but since the bomb was not armed at the time, the explosion was "only" the explosives designed to push the nuclear material together with enough power to attain critical mass. Really big crater, no mushroom cloud.

Fusion warheads in the Honorverse are pure fusion devices. They don't use fission to kickstart the reaction.

Duckk wrote:Fusion warheads in the Honorverse are pure fusion devices. They don't use fission to kickstart the reaction.

More technically, they use gravitational fields to compress the fusion fuel (probably hydrogen) to the point where it fuses.

Without the gravitational field, the worst it would do is burn in the presence of an oxidizer. (Oh, the Humanity!)

tonyz wrote:One should probably note that even if Byng retrieved any debris, and even if his (possible) staff intelligence officer had begun analyzing it, it's by no means clear either that any useful data was retrieved, or that said data was aboard the dispatch boat that made it out. I am also thinking that Byng would have been very unlikely to entrust copies of that data to anybody on-planet given his towering disdain for any non-Solarians.

Or that any useful data COULD be retrieved.