Missile Telemetry

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though I do wonder if there's a limit to how many FTL control channels can be "talking" in a given area of space without interference. If a 6 ship squardon's fire is normally controlled (at any given instance) by 1 of their 12 KH IIs, how many more missiles can they control if they decide not to care about platform survivability and let as many broadcast as can without interference? I have to believe it's far less than 12x, but how much less?

Jonathan, this post intrigues me greatly because of the keyword: interference.

I always thought that someone was going to counter Apollo by disrupting/interfering with its transmissions. Of course, I thought it'd be Foraker. Perhaps in the upcoming book with the MAlign.

We know the FTL signals are just high frequency vibrations moving along the Alpha wall[1]. It would seem logical that a big enough signal could swamp them, or that enough other pluses could interfere with them.

I suspect if you parked a warship, wedge on, just in front of a keyhole II that you'd block any FTL signals past that point.

But a warship sized wedge within a lightsecond of an enemy wall isn't exactly an effective jamming method .

A big powerful FTL transmitter of similar pulse rate would conceivably be able to pump out enough psuedorandom junk to interfere with the missiles control links. Though Manticore's make some significant strides in makeing their pulses (and presumably receivers) directional - so you'd need to be more or less in line with the transmissions.

I've previously wondered (though with no supporting evidence) whether a rapidly rotating wedge would cause signal strength changes (aka pulses) because you'd rapidly be looking at wedge, broadside gap, wedge, broadside gap... If so could that raise the noise floor and interfere with FLT links? The downside is that it would be very predictable pattern, so you might be able to simply compensate for it; though a couple going at carefully picked RPMs might cause interference beats that could be harder to filter out...


Pretty much all wild speculation - but you're not alone in wondering who and when will make some kind of noise jammer for FTL signals.

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[1] Actually they move along the next upwards hyper wall at the speed of light in that next hyperband. The amount that they are FTL with respect to the band you're in depends on the ratio between their respecitve speeds of light. So n-space gets 62x faster than light transition while, even as low as the Delta bands, you get a measly 1.32x faster than light. Good thing you don't have major missile battles in hyperspace.

My guess would be RMN it self would be the first to find a way to jam the FTL signals as well as work around jamming technologies. They do have the experience of war knowing that every advance they can make tech wise can be countered or matched in time by an advisory.

pnakasone wrote:My guess would be RMN it self would be the first to find a way to jam the FTL signals as well as work around jamming technologies. They do have the experience of war knowing that every advance they can make tech wise can be countered or matched in time by an advisory.

True. Their R&D groups would be negligent if they weren't looking into jamming FTL signals, as well as how to counter or overcome that jamming.
That said they don't seem likely to be the first to tip their hand and use it operationally... Though I guess if someone else got FTL fire control into operation the RMN might unveil jamming despite the leg up it might provide people figuring out how to counter Apollo.

Jonathan_S wrote:

pnakasone wrote:My guess would be RMN it self would be the first to find a way to jam the FTL signals as well as work around jamming technologies. They do have the experience of war knowing that every advance they can make tech wise can be countered or matched in time by an advisory.

True. Their R&D groups would be negligent if they weren't looking into jamming FTL signals, as well as how to counter or overcome that jamming.
That said they don't seem likely to be the first to tip their hand and use it operationally... Though I guess if someone else got FTL fire control into operation the RMN might unveil jamming despite the leg up it might provide people figuring out how to counter Apollo.

If they really want to play it out. They will have Apollo 2.0 ready which require different counters then Apollo 1.0.

Jonathan_S wrote:

pnakasone wrote:My guess would be RMN it self would be the first to find a way to jam the FTL signals as well as work around jamming technologies. They do have the experience of war knowing that every advance they can make tech wise can be countered or matched in time by an advisory.

True. Their R&D groups would be negligent if they weren't looking into jamming FTL signals, as well as how to counter or overcome that jamming.
That said they don't seem likely to be the first to tip their hand and use it operationally... Though I guess if someone else got FTL fire control into operation the RMN might unveil jamming despite the leg up it might provide people figuring out how to counter Apollo.

Well the FTL comms also relies on gravitics and rippling off the Alpha band, Apollo relies on the FTL comm to truly operate, and jammers operate in the active defense role prior to CM's to try to blind incoming missiles. Since missiles primarily use gravitic sensors for target tracking, and it's also the primary sensor period... if you can generate enough gravitic transmissions, and/or white noise you blind virtually every major tracking or communication system.

However, that'd take one helluva big, and robust transmitter, it's also going to require one helluva lot of juice, and it's also going to be fairly localized because space is big.

Downside, doing it this way blinds everything gravitics, including your own tracking. Upside, everything from ship tracking to FTL comms won't work; so you have a chance to come in 'out of the sun' of your gravitic jamming and engage with beams before they realize you're there.

However since the only other people who have the FTL comms are Manticore, Haven, Grayson, and I suppose the Andermani by now... anyone who wants to cut Apollo FTL needs to essentially BE Manticore. They'd need FTL comms of their own [Manticore tech], miniaturized emitters sufficiently small to pack the grav-pulse jammers into remote drones [Manty tech], power it [more Manty tech], and if you don't want Mistletoe or a spinoff to take them out, you'll need those drones to be stealthy and fast [two more Manty tech items].

Pretty much at this stage of the missile game, to even hope to beat Manticore, you've got to pretty much be Manticore.

Building a noise jammer is much, much easier than doing useful stuff on RF. For example, on 2.4 Ghz is FAR easier than making a 300mb/sec wifi transceiver. Very effective noise jammers were released in the mid-70s to jam at 2010 technology. In this case, they are called microwave ovens. Which operate at about 1500 watts while the radiated power is up to 0.1 watts.

So no, you don't have to understand in great detail how Manticore makes their system work, you just need to know it that it uses directional grav waves. However you also need to have a way to cause them to get absorbed, deflected, corrupted or otherwise not deliver the signal they expect. The signal itself will tell you the SN ratio and give you a pretty good idea how much jamming power you need to generate. And you will need a LOT, since you are presumably trying to do omnidirectional jamming against directional signals.

If you are just trying to illuminate the RMN fleet you need a lot less power, but still a lot more power than the FTL transmitters in the Apollo missiles. You get this with SatCom jamming, where you use a huge transmitter on the ground to overload the orbital receiver and bury the valid signal in noise.

Though if you were able to duplicate the effect that you get with a WH transit, where it screws up hyperspace for x period, that might be interesting.

Already betting that there is an option in the Apollo control missiles to try and target such jammers.

Some form of brute force jamming is a predictable response to Apollo, and any such jammer must make a decent target.

After all, an Apollo shot can spread the normal missiles for triangulation such a jammer.

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Annachie wrote:Already betting that there is an option in the Apollo control missiles to try and target such jammers.

Some form of brute force jamming is a predictable response to Apollo, and any such jammer must make a decent target.

After all, an Apollo shot can spread the normal missiles for triangulation such a jammer.

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Yes, Home on Jam is an obvious pre-programmed counter. Though I think I'd set it up so that a single strong jamming source couldn't be used to 'decoy' all of a salvo away from their real targets.

I can think of a few ways to do that
1) Totally automatic - a factory setting in the AI software that by default, in the face of FTL jamming, checks a random number generator to decide whether to continue after it's original target or divert to target the jammer. Set the threshhold so that no more than 5% of a normally expected squadron's salvo will be likely to divert.

2) Tuned automatic - Have, even now before we've seen any jamming, the squadron's tactical computers routinely tell ACMs at launch what they should do in the face of FTL jamming - that lets you pick which ones will go after the jammers, and fine tune for different missile salvo sizes. (Note - the normal parameters could be left automatic on the Tactical sections computers but that's still more flexible that leaving it up to the missiles because those computers could automatically adjust for salvo size, and probably target priority).

3) Manual - The missiles only change targeting if they receive a lightspeed order to switch to home on jam mode. Missiles can't get sucked away from original targets without human intervention, but the signal lag might mean a couple salvos attack blind before an order to divert some missiles after the jammer catches up.

The good news is that if some form of home-on-jam code is, for some inexplicable reason, not preloaded on the missiles that the tactical section could still hope to establish that lightspeed control link and improvise some with your already launched missiles, even in the face of complete FTL jamming.

OTOH, could accidental jamming come about as a byproduct of the mechanics of MAlign "engines?" Already known to the MAlign which will be a nasty surprise to the GA.

cthia wrote:OTOH, could accidental jamming come about as a byproduct of the mechanics of MAlign "engines?" Already known to the MAlign which will be a nasty surprise to the GA.

Can't see how. The spider drive is pretty much the diametrical opposite of a jammer.

The spider drive's overpowered tractors produce virtually no FTL signal; achieving the MAlign's goal of a nearly undetectable propulsion mechanism.

A jammer, OTOH, would have to be putting out lots of FTL signals to obscure, overpower, or cause interference with the FTL fire contorl signals. It'd be blatantly viable and noisy.