What will Admiral Higgins' next command be?

Jonathan_S wrote: Thanks, even just the numbers you remembered were enough to do a text search and find it. It was in Ashes of Victory

Ashes of Victory: Ch 35 wrote:"Agreed. Agreed." White Haven rubbed his chin some more. The final—or currently "final"—version of the long-range missiles could reach 96,000 gravities of acceleration, four thousand more than the ones Alice Truman had deployed at Basilisk. That gave them a powered attack range from rest of almost fifty-one light-seconds at maximum acceleration. By stepping the drives down to 48,000 g, endurance could be tripled, however, and that upped the maximum powered envelope to well over three and a half light-minutes and a terminal velocity of .83 c. That was crowding the very limits of the fire control technology available even to the Royal Manticoran Navy, however.

Also, I'm embarrassed to say my spreadsheet was disorganized enough I'd missed that I already had one higher acceleration entry. There was a quote in Echoes of Honor (When 8th fleet mousetraps the 2nd arm of the Peeps at Basilisk) about missiles with 95,000g acceleration.

Finally I'd note that the internal numbers of that quote don't quite work out. Whether you're using 9.8 m/s or 10 m/s for 1g the terminal velocity for half power is higher than 0.83c (I get 0.847c or 0.865c; assuming it has the normal 540 second burn time)

It works out if the 48k is a typo/thinko for 46k.
46k gee * 10 m/s/s/gee * 540 s = 248.4 e6 m/s = 0.83 c.

Of course, at an acceleration of 46k gee, it should really be reaching only 201 e6m/s (0.67 c),
but with a powered range of 69.5 e9m (3.87 lt-min).
At 48k gee, it should be reaching 206.8 e6m/s (0.69 c),
with a powered range of 72.8 e9m (4.05 lt-min).

IMO Higgins will be given commands that will take him out of -shall we say- the front lines. He will be given important but strategically less important assignments like ambassador to Haven or CinC Ninth Fleet or Silisia station after ADM Sarnow rotates home.

Much like what happened to ADM Jack Fletcher who was promoted to important but less and less relevant positions after Guadalcanal. IIRC he commanded the 13th naval district HQ Seattle WA, the Northwestern Sea Frontier and CinC North Pacific which after 1943 was basically a backwater like the South Pacific Area command in roughly the same time period.

Late to the game but let me put my thinking hat in the ring with a great big, "well duh..."

BuShips. Grendlesbane was hip deep in building SD(P)'s and yes, he had to make the tough call. Then Home Fleet's CO with an assortment of ships which will need to be serviced, new shipyards to be built, cooperation with all sorts of known folks.

Plus (okay, this is a big dark chocolate candy bar with raspberry truffle for roseandheather, I admit it...) he might need to work with a couple of talented, did things right and sometimes lost anyway former Peeps, now RN folks including Admiral Chin...

Applause please....

saber964 wrote:IMO Higgins will be given commands that will take him out of -shall we say- the front lines. He will be given important but strategically less important assignments like ambassador to Haven or CinC Ninth Fleet or Silisia station after ADM Sarnow rotates home.

Much like what happened to ADM Jack Fletcher who was promoted to important but less and less relevant positions after Guadalcanal. IIRC he commanded the 13th naval district HQ Seattle WA, the Northwestern Sea Frontier and CinC North Pacific which after 1943 was basically a backwater like the South Pacific Area command in roughly the same time period.

But if they do that, before he has a chance to get back on the horse, it could affect him much as the situation with Aivars Terekhov before he got a chance to "re"prove the temper of his mettle, and the looming and cloudy questions of doubt that hung over his head by his crew. Which could have affected his decision during the Talbott crisis - wanting to play it safe and lay up (golf), to protect his career. It was the unbending mettle that he showed under threat of his career that earned him the total respect of his peers.

He totally should ask Dame Estelle out - for breakfast the morning after.

Didn't Terekhov have doubts of his own?

Design/Engineering tradeoffs making up the discrepancies in missile drive performance could perhaps be believable for SLN missile drives being slightly better than pre-war Manticoran SDMs.
I'm not sure about that, since the Peeps were shelling out for Solly tech to improve their missiles, and while sensors and EW capabilities are important, better missile drives would have been handy.


Those tradeoffs making the standard SLN deployed missile drives better than 1920 Manticoran missile drives? No, that I don't buy.
Especially since Manticore would have had good access to anything coming from Solarian R&D, between their long-standing practice of exploiting the wormhole network for getting information from everywhere and ties to Beowulf and the Beowulf SDF. Plus the decades of R&D Manticore put into improving their own missile drives.


I could maybe accept that somewhere in the League a somebody made a breakthrough in missile drive performance that Manticore didn't have or hadn't matched/exceeded yet - if it weren't for the fact that the notoriously slow to adopt new things SLN already had these advances in missile drives in standard deployment. Or if they were something brand new to the SLN ... but they're not new.

Kytheros wrote:Design/Engineering tradeoffs making up the discrepancies in missile drive performance could perhaps be believable for SLN missile drives being slightly better than pre-war Manticoran SDMs.
I'm not sure about that, since the Peeps were shelling out for Solly tech to improve their missiles, and while sensors and EW capabilities are important, better missile drives would have been handy.


Those tradeoffs making the standard SLN deployed missile drives better than 1920 Manticoran missile drives? No, that I don't buy.
Especially since Manticore would have had good access to anything coming from Solarian R&D, between their long-standing practice of exploiting the wormhole network for getting information from everywhere and ties to Beowulf and the Beowulf SDF. Plus the decades of R&D Manticore put into improving their own missile drives.


I could maybe accept that somewhere in the League a somebody made a breakthrough in missile drive performance that Manticore didn't have or hadn't matched/exceeded yet - if it weren't for the fact that the notoriously slow to adopt new things SLN already had these advances in missile drives in standard deployment. Or if they were something brand new to the SLN ... but they're not new.

You talk about the SLN as if it's a coherent entity that knows what it's doing. Think of it as being under perpetual governance by a Janacek. The odd useful things like the Sag-C or Katana somehow got passed around him(even if they went out-house for the latter).

The slightly faster missile drive is probably a result of Frontier Fleet pushing for more missile R&D. They may be limited in what they could do, if the SLN had frozen missile dimensions to ensure new missiles would always fit old launchers.

As for why Haven didn't buy or get it... well, that accel/runtime is the most visible and measurable characteristic of the missile. Simple sensor recordings would end up back on Sol, being thrown in the SL's faces. "Exactly the same flight performance observed when SLNS This and SLNS That spotted by one of our merchies engaging pirates in X system". Harder to do that sort of stuff with improved sensors, EW, lasing rod efficiency, etc..

Kytheros wrote:Design/Engineering tradeoffs making up the discrepancies in missile drive performance could perhaps be believable for SLN missile drives being slightly better than pre-war Manticoran SDMs.

I don't know of any explicit evidence, but just having smaller missiles in the SLN could account for more acceleration. We do know their warheads are smaller, so it wouldn't surprise me if their missiles were also less massive.

What performance figures do we have for SLN missiles? The only data I can remember, and it's vague, is for the terminal stage of the Cataphract missiles. Those use countermissile drives, which have always had far higher acceleration numbers than shipkillers.

Weird Harold wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Design/Engineering tradeoffs making up the discrepancies in missile drive performance could perhaps be believable for SLN missile drives being slightly better than pre-war Manticoran SDMs.

I don't know of any explicit evidence, but just having smaller missiles in the SLN could account for more acceleration. We do know their warheads are smaller, so it wouldn't surprise me if their missiles were also less massive.

IMO, it's likely the SLN had frozen missile dimensions long ago. Unless they're sized to fit in their existing DD/CL, CA/BC or SD launchers, any new missile would require new launchers - for everything currently in inventory.

They can build later ships with new launchers(able to fire smaller missiles), of course. But as long as that first flight Indefatigable or Scientist is still around, the logistics problem is enormously complicated.

Bear in mind the SLN had never before fought engagements where it had a qualitative or numerical inferiority(until Gold Peak showed up at New Tuscany to avenge Commodore Chatterjee). They've never had ships limp home before saying "We needed missiles with more X." Virtually all demand for missile improvements would have been from Frontier Fleet.

And what does Frontier Fleet mostly do? Frighten targets into cooperating. The most useful element of a warning shot is how fast it reaches its target - the detonation at the end of that run is merely emphasis.

SharkHunter wrote:Late to the game but let me put my thinking hat in the ring with a great big, "well duh..."

BuShips. Grendlesbane was hip deep in building SD(P)'s and yes, he had to make the tough call. Then Home Fleet's CO with an assortment of ships which will need to be serviced, new shipyards to be built, cooperation with all sorts of known folks.

Plus (okay, this is a big dark chocolate candy bar with raspberry truffle for roseandheather, I admit it...) he might need to work with a couple of talented, did things right and sometimes lost anyway former Peeps, now RN folks including Admiral Chin...

Applause please....

*cheerfully munches chocolate bar*

I am so down for that.