Next Bolthole devellopment

kzt wrote:ICBMs are an interesting case of technology. The war trajectories are over the poles, but nobody has ever tested them over the poles. They are only tested EW or WE. And the first flight often reveals some anomalies in the guidance system and removing that makes them much more accurate on subsequent flights. So it's a pretty good bet that a Trident or Minuteman missile can hit a target on Kwajalein Atoll with a high degree of accuracy, it's not so certain that this is true of targets in the vicinity of Moscow. Hopefully we will never learn this.

One reason both sides had so many missiles was to guarantee the targets got hit no matter what kind of failures occurred.

pnakasone wrote:

kzt wrote:ICBMs are an interesting case of technology. The war trajectories are over the poles, but nobody has ever tested them over the poles. They are only tested EW or WE. And the first flight often reveals some anomalies in the guidance system and removing that makes them much more accurate on subsequent flights. So it's a pretty good bet that a Trident or Minuteman missile can hit a target on Kwajalein Atoll with a high degree of accuracy, it's not so certain that this is true of targets in the vicinity of Moscow. Hopefully we will never learn this.

One reason both sides had so many missiles was to guarantee the targets got hit no matter what kind of failures occurred.

Well to be accurate, extra numbers only help if the failures are randomized; not if they're systematic.

Say, improbably, that the ICBMs has some systematic bug in their guidance system triggered when they fly north over the pole. (Maybe some kind of divide by zero issue or math under flow when they cross the pole or switch from heading north to south). It wouldn't matter if you fired one or a million and one. They'd all fail the exact same way.
You hope to have tested for that, but we have rockets screw up due to overflow, Ariane 5,planes nav systems the screw up when going below sea level or across the international date line.
Ultimately you don't know for sure what they'll do until you've fired one for real on the real trajectory.

Capital ship missile relative sizes:
Mantycore single drive missile = 135 tons
Mk 23 MDM = 120 tons

Add a small capacitor to the Mk-23, just big enough to start the fusion reactor. Everything else can be the same, which will make the new missile slightly larger. (possibly 5 tons, 125 tons)

The Mk-23 would still be used in pods, but the new missile could be fired from tubes that couldn't fire a Mk 23, such as haven or beaowulf.

And yes, I give DW permission to use the idea.

kzt wrote:There isn't enough time for anything. Bolthole is far enough from Haven that it takes a long time to reach. Haven take a long time to reach from Manticore. So they are going to drag the researchers and their families across the galaxy and set up shop. Think that happened in a week? Then they have no equipment (having it all blowed up real good) so the first order of things is to figure out what Haven is doing and is capable of and tell the Haven researchers all the deep secrets of RMN tech.

Yeah, that's not going to happen quickly. They have been in a hot at war for 18 years and a cold war for 20 before that and everyone involved is deeply indoctrinated into the need to keep secrets from exactly the people they need to talk to.

And if they do come up with something, they need to either figure out how to make it with the crappy tech Haven has or ship it to Beowulf and then get them involved.

This all takes a lot of time. And if the GA hasn't resolved their issues with the SL in some final fashion in a few years they are dead, as the SL will crush them in a long and serious war. So inside a year either everyone apologies and makes up, the SL tears itself apart, or the GA is involved in a war of attrition with someone with 50 times the population and 200 times the manufacturing capability. I suspect the latter will not end well for the GA.

darrell wrote:Capital ship missile relative sizes:
Mantycore single drive missile = 135 tons
Mk 23 MDM = 120 tons

Where'd 120 tons come from? That doesn't sound right...

Back to the Topic!

I think, the main question is not what is possible!
The main question is, what does the Military need most!

So, the manties and the havies have better weapons than the league, so that shouldn´t be the main Need of the Military!

At the other Hand, remember the Yawata hit! How could that hqappen? It happens, because nobody has seen the enemy! And that is the main question: "what can we do to detect the enemy the next time?"

So, my guess is, that the bolthole Researchers spent the most of their resurces into Sensor tec! So we can expect something in that direction!

On the other side, sensor tec is an endless race with cloaking tecnology! So, if the Alliance improve their sensors, we can expect better cloaking devices, too!

The research departments at Bolthole are not going to pour everything into one area of concern. To start with, there will be a lot of separate areas working on very different projects and turning ALL of them to sensor research looking for ways to spot Spider Drive would waste a lot of time and resources.

Manticore (and Grayson) need ships (at least repairs/maintence/parts) and weapons for the existing platforms. Manticore is going to have a much wider need given the wider range of existing ships in their fleet.

If Manticore and Haven tech are going to be blended, even if it is "only" adding Manti tech to the Haven platforms, they are going to have to redesign or at least heavily modify existing classes and weapons to make that work. While they might start building the production capabilities for the Manti tech equipment, they aren't going to be able to do more than graft it onto existing RHN ships until they understand how the new/changed systems and equipment will interface and affect what it is going into.

Rather than a range of compleatly redesigned "GA" suite of warships (and weapons) it is more likely that there will be larger sets of design and equipment changes to the RHN classes to be built and possibly "improved" RMN ships with lesser scales of changes as the newest existing RMN ships of current design are already incorporating most of what RMN has. That they will be producing- once designs are finished- the next flights of various designes is probable but you can't start that till you have a good idea of what they will be and set up the various production lines and re or cross train the workers.

The training of the Bolthole staffs in mfg and production of the Manti or hybrid Manti/Haven equipment is one of the bottlenecks.

I think there may well be a fair amount of frustration on the part of the Manticoran researchers as they try to interface with what they consider less able Havenite systems. Some of the initial work at Bolthole will be to upgrade the Havenite systems to accommodate the Manticoran requirements in order to start improving what is to be produced at Bolthole

George J. Smith wrote:I think there may well be a fair amount of frustration on the part of the Manticoran researchers as they try to interface with what they consider less able Havenite systems.

How much interface is there between "weapons and sensors" and "propulsion and life support?" The only interface I can think of off-hand might be maneuvering/navigation and tactical maneuvering. Even there, an automatic interface isn't necessary and CWO Harkness, PMV, could whip up a software patch in about thirty seconds.

If you just put a "patch" into a system designed by Haven Navy using Manticorian software, you are going to have to test for incompatibilities and delays. What happens when an order is given to do X and it is passed from a Havenite designed system, thorough a patch to a Havenite system because it has to use a route that also passes the information somewhere else?

What is the likelihood that you can just plug in (and wire and bolt and snap) RMN equipment into RHN power and data systems without figuring out if the equipment and any downstream gear (RMN or RHN) is going to read the signals and commands correctly to do exactly what the original command was? Will it have to get "translated" and then retranslated? What are the system delays that it could or will cause. Kind of asking if the command comes though as "Ready, Aim, Fire" or Ready, Fire, Aim" or "Fire" which is actually a string that includes, : confirm missille is operating on internal power, that the safety interlocks are all green, the capassators in the launcher are at strength, the outer (and inner doors) are- in fact- open, baffle/blast door between launcher and loading queue is-in fact- closed, the gunport circuit for this launcher is 1) live, armed, showing green and ready to cycle though open-close when the weapon is launched?

I don't recall how close- if at all close- the missile weapons dementions are between RMN and RHN and don't expecdt that they are going to be able to fire each other's missiles any time soon either anti-ship, countermeasures, EW etc. Same for RDs.
No mention about the two empires doing anything like going to common equipment such as the NATO or WARSAW PACT alliances. I don't think they are going to come around to that level of working together for quite a while if for no other reason then they both have much better equipment (and tactics and leadership & experience) than the SLN, probably places like Mannheim and the rest of the RF plus actual combat experience than the Alignment.

In the short term, while it is probable that Haven is going to want to add RMN improvements to its new ships, and weapons, they are, along with Manticore, going to need to keep producing ships and weapons comparable with present systems to gain quantity to make the quality maitain it's advantage against SLN level and other variations we have not yet seen.

The Alignment has been very sneaky and had done just great with it's proprietary stealth ships and drives (and things like the Streak Drive) and bio-weapons. But pulling off Oyster Bay and actualy fighting battles for systems such as Trevor's Star, Hancock, Manticore etc is a differnt deal. Places like Erwhon and now the Maya Sector have much more actual warfighting experience that the Alignment. We see a Mesa naval officer riding herd on the PRH exiles acting as mercenaries but NO background on the actual level of experience of the Mesa SDF/Navy for other than protecting it's own system. Perhaps the Judean League has a more experienced (if SLN level equiped) navy than Erwhon or Grayson but do they have any recent experience, even if it is anti-piracy and commerce protection plus "local" wars withing the last 30 to 50 years.

Both Haven and Manticore are going to have to push the construction and staffing of DD though BC class ships with most current weapons development to try and cover the SLN's likely plans of attack. Haven using Manticore tech to improve the range and control of it's missiles while keeping the overall size usable in existing magazines and launchers is probably where they are going to get the most improvement. That and things like FTL communications and control.

Weird Harold wrote:How much interface is there between "weapons and sensors" and "propulsion and life support?" The only interface I can think of off-hand might be maneuvering/navigation and tactical maneuvering. Even there, an automatic interface isn't necessary and CWO Harkness, PMV, could whip up a software patch in about thirty seconds.

David might well think that, but no, it's vastly more complex.