No Scorched Earth-Effects of a Living McBryde

munroburton wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Why do you need a crew? You have a crew on it that gets it ready for transit but bails before it enters the wormhole. A simple autopilot should be able to keep it going where it's supposed to go. There's nothing to do on the other side, it never goes out of sail mode. (And likely has nothing but the sail unless it can't be carried by another ship.)

I know you can't bail from a ship in an inbound wormhole transit lane without your lifeboat blowing up. If the same is true for the outbound lane, then yes, a suicide crew is required.

I'm saying to point it down the transit lane but not enter it. I'm thinking of what we did a few times in WWII--filled a plane with explosives, a pilot flew it out from England and bailed, other planes guided it by radio into the target. The low-tech version of the cruise missile.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

munroburton wrote:I know you can't bail from a ship in an inbound wormhole transit lane without your lifeboat blowing up. If the same is true for the outbound lane, then yes, a suicide crew is required.

I'm saying to point it down the transit lane but not enter it. I'm thinking of what we did a few times in WWII--filled a plane with explosives, a pilot flew it out from England and bailed, other planes guided it by radio into the target. The low-tech version of the cruise missile.

and how do you control the drone After it goes through the wormhole. The pland full of explosives was guided to its target, a wormhole drone is not.

once it goes through the wormhole, what then? Any ship within energy weapons range is out past the orbit of the moon, unaimed fire will miss, and there is no way to designate targets without crew aboard. same for missiles in pods or tubes.

A closer analagy might be the buzz bomb. it flies till it runs out of fuel, so it might hit something worthwile, but 99 times out of 100 it missed it's target (factory) and hit something low value (home or field.)

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm saying to point it down the transit lane but not enter it. I'm thinking of what we did a few times in WWII--filled a plane with explosives, a pilot flew it out from England and bailed, other planes guided it by radio into the target. The low-tech version of the cruise missile.

And you're still ignoring RFC. Unmanned transit of a wormhole is NOT possible in the Honorverse.

Weird Harold wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm saying to point it down the transit lane but not enter it. I'm thinking of what we did a few times in WWII--filled a plane with explosives, a pilot flew it out from England and bailed, other planes guided it by radio into the target. The low-tech version of the cruise missile.

And you're still ignoring RFC. Unmanned transit of a wormhole is NOT possible in the Honorverse.

Eh ... there's also stuff in the books that suggest some degree of remote control may be possible.

I think that it might be more accurate to say that you can't rely on a fully autonomous wormhole transit on both ends of the wormhole.
You can probably manage to set up an autopilot run into the wormhole all the way up to and through initiating the hyperdrive. But there's no way to tell what happens on the other end, and (for some reason) Honorverse navigation automatics aren't capable of adjusting for current sensor data, so they can't be relied upon to get you out of a wormhole transit lane, due to periodic irregularities/changes/fluctuations/shifts.

At any rate, supposing you could manage it, such a wormhole drone would have to be loaded with a mix of armor and EW/ECM hardware in order to be any use. Lob a couple through to start jamming the hell out of the other side, hopefully enough to buy the ship(s) you send through enough time, either to clear the terminus or to get a snapshot and return back to your end.
Such hypothetical drones would be highly specialized, however, and probably fairly expensive - to be worthwhile, they'd have to have impellers/sails, fusion plant, hyperdrive, plus a significant amount of EW/ECM hardware, and maybe armor. You're looking at probably 100ktons+ each, and you'd need several of them.
Actually, what might work would be a mix of them in a mass transit with a manned ship to update the drone nav data and then run away with all the data they could pull.

SharkHunter wrote:I think... Felix is an inhabited system? or am I remembering wrong [?] .... I don't have the books in front of me but when Detweiler was trying to tell someone how to deal with a nearby planet, yada yada yada... What I was saying is that if MacBryde's data has information on ANY Mesa-controlled wormholes, you know that the GA has to do something about it. So the "surveyed" info -- if it was from the other side, leading to Torch -- could be critical.

You're sort of right-Felix is barely inhabitable, but Weird Harold pointed out, it's claimed by a number of corporations and possessed by the MAlign, acting through Mannerheim.

And I don't doubt that in this circumstance, McBryde's information isn't going to be useful, but unless he could give them a name or region to as a starter, the only thing the GA is going to be able to do is start looking. And while you can't physically move a star system or a wormhole, which limits their options the Alignment has "operational security" down to a T (I wouldn't be surprised if they managed to insert that in the genetic code somewhere). They're going to do their best to ensure that the GA can't discover where Felix is, or any details of where it might connect to, and their best is pretty damned good. The last thing they want is the GA poking their nose into Felix, or worse, Darius.

Kytheros wrote:
*SNIP*
I think there might also be a "Prince Felix" or something who wants to join the RF, but his population might be less eager. Different place, though.

There is. Prince Felix is the head of the Siegfried System, and a friend/old fencing buddy of King Clinton III of New Madagascar. Albrecht specifically mentions him as a possible addition to the Factor, and says he will have to be handled with a light touch.

A quick by the way/check me.... I don't think there's anything that implies that McBryde doesn't know enough to know about the RF. What he doesn't know about is Darius/yes no?

So a live McBride would still have changed the stories.

SharkHunter wrote:A quick by the way/check me.... I don't think there's anything that implies that McBryde doesn't know enough to know about the RF. What he doesn't know about is Darius/yes no?

So a live McBride would still have changed the stories.

According to Albrecht when he found out, Jack didn't know about Darius, the Factor, or Houdini. I imagine that Jack could have speculation about those things, but no direct "proof."
so that's a no on Darius.

Indeed he would. In the short-term he would have an impact, but I'm guessing McBryde alive would have a much greater effect on the Alignment's plans and policies medium-and-long term.

darrell wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm saying to point it down the transit lane but not enter it. I'm thinking of what we did a few times in WWII--filled a plane with explosives, a pilot flew it out from England and bailed, other planes guided it by radio into the target. The low-tech version of the cruise missile.

and how do you control the drone After it goes through the wormhole. The pland full of explosives was guided to its target, a wormhole drone is not.

once it goes through the wormhole, what then? Any ship within energy weapons range is out past the orbit of the moon, unaimed fire will miss, and there is no way to designate targets without crew aboard. same for missiles in pods or tubes.

A closer analagy might be the buzz bomb. it flies till it runs out of fuel, so it might hit something worthwile, but 99 times out of 100 it missed it's target (factory) and hit something low value (home or field.)

Missiles that lose lock seek targets on their own--nowhere near as well as if they're being controlled. While I'm not picturing using actual missiles the seekers should still work. The hull is covered in lasing rods that point at anything they can see. That should basically clear out anything near the wormhole.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Missiles that lose lock seek targets on their own--nowhere near as well as if they're being controlled. While I'm not picturing using actual missiles the seekers should still work. The hull is covered in lasing rods that point at anything they can see. That should basically clear out anything near the wormhole.

No, the missile seekers ability to find and lock onto a 3 meter diameter black object covered in RAM and cooled to background is very, very limited. And that is what a mine is.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Missiles that lose lock seek targets on their own--nowhere near as well as if they're being controlled. While I'm not picturing using actual missiles the seekers should still work. The hull is covered in lasing rods that point at anything they can see. That should basically clear out anything near the wormhole.

No, the missile seekers ability to find and lock onto a 3 meter diameter black object covered in RAM and cooled to background is very, very limited. And that is what a mine is.

Yeah, if you're sending something unmanned through a wormhole as part of an assault, sending a weapons platform/bomb/etc isn't going to be effective.
The only thing that might be worth it would be something to jam the hell out of sensors, thus helping to buy time for your manned units following to get clear or into stealth, or head back though.