Wet Navy Equivalents

Now that the RMN has an equivalent for an aircraft carrier, I think Hemphill's jeune ecole should create a submarine equivalent.

These ships would lurk in the alpha and higher bands of hyperspace, and be virtually undetectable. They can remain there for long periods and either spy on opposing star nations or help destroy shipping and warships via stealth and the usual weapons mix. Could Mesa's Spider ships be the inspiration?

Greetings!

Having ships lurk in hyperspace for the purposes you're suggesting generally doesn't work.

Regarding your first suggestion, since ships can't view normal space from hyper space, there's really no intelligence for them to gather. Get enough ships to provide enough coverage, you might pick up data about who leaves and enters the system, but that's only modestly useful information at best. It gives no information as to what the disposition of the forces are inside the system, nor any idea of any other of the defenses.

As for the raiding aspects, that'd require a lot of luck. The physics of hyperspace means that sensor reach is greatly reduced. Because of that, the ability to generate an intercept is limited unless the ship just so happens to be parked in the perfect spot. There's not going to be a whole lot of time between detecting a ship, stealthily building up an intercept course (because otherwise they'd take protective actions like a crash translation), and reaching engagement range. That's why pretty much all raiding attacks happen inside the hyper limit, where there are fewer options for the prey.

And in both cases, that presupposes that the defenders don't take the initiative to do something about people lurking around their star system. It might be something you can get away with once or twice, but someone is bound to catch on quickly. For example, the Argus network used by the Peeps in SVW provided good information, but ceased to be used again once the Alliance caught on.

Ultimately, the true submarine analog is the Spider Drive ships used by the Alignment. They're slow, stealthy ambush predators that hide in the vast nothingness of space.

AdAstra45 wrote:Now that the RMN has an equivalent for an aircraft carrier, I think Hemphill's jeune ecole should create a submarine equivalent.

These ships would lurk in the alpha and higher bands of hyperspace, and be virtually undetectable. They can remain there for long periods and either spy on opposing star nations or help destroy shipping and warships via stealth and the usual weapons mix. Could Mesa's Spider ships be the inspiration?

It appears to me from what we've seen that Lenny Detweilers are going to fulfill the "submarine"-like role, though in a slightly different way.

Duckk wrote:Greetings!

Ultimately, the true submarine analog is the Spider Drive ships used by the Alignment. They're slow, stealthy ambush predators that hide in the vast nothingness of space.

Agreed, to me these would be more an equivalent of the WWI and early WWII diesel/electric boats rather than a modern SSN or even modern diesel/electric in that to stay hidden they would have very low accel (submerged speed for the WWI boats) but still have a killing punch depending upon what missiles and energy weapons each might be armed with.

Once detected then destroyers or other escort/patrol ships like Manty or Havenite LACs can localize them and gather hides for the barn door, at least that's how I see it.

To escape a hunter/killer party then the "spider" would almost HAVE to do the equivalent of a "battle surface," i.e. reveal herself by generating a real wedge and pray they can out-accelerate or out-run the hunters.

Perhaps there might be "decoys" available to the spider, capable of fooling at least temporarily the hunters. It's interesting to think about.

Although they must beware of the same tactics of WWll subs with their own pack mentality, who lay in wait for destroyers on the chase. They were called Wolfpacks for the German U-boats. There is safety in numbers. Which makes a LAC seem the better choise to effect the sweep for enemy ships -- losing LACs would be better than losing anything else.

Another tactic used by WWII German subs was to shoot and scoot. By the time the missile exploded, the sub is long gone. That was made possible with the updated fire control system that included the torpedo data computer (TDC) which nullified the U-boat from having to get in too close to guarantee a hit.

Also, the GA must beware of MAlign mines set in the path of beaters. And if the mines have any MAlign peculiarities, well...

robert132 wrote:
Agreed, to me these would be more an equivalent of the WWI and early WWII diesel/electric boats rather than a modern SSN or even modern diesel/electric in that to stay hidden they would have very low accel (submerged speed for the WWI boats) but still have a killing punch depending upon what missiles and energy weapons each might be armed with.

Once detected then destroyers or other escort/patrol ships like Manty or Havenite LACs can localize them and gather hides for the barn door, at least that's how I see it.

To escape a hunter/killer party then the "spider" would almost HAVE to do the equivalent of a "battle surface," i.e. reveal herself by generating a real wedge and pray they can out-accelerate or out-run the hunters.

Perhaps there might be "decoys" available to the spider, capable of fooling at least temporarily the hunters. It's interesting to think about.

Depends on where they hunt. If they lurk just outside the hyper limit, looking to smash shipping as it approaches, they can quietly slip into hyper if a hunting party gets on their scent.


It wouldn't be their first option, because while translating up into hyper creates no signature in n-space returning from hyper does -- so they'd have to back way off too far away to be intercepted on reentry even if detected and waste months crawling up to the hyper limit again. But still, if your choices are to fight an overwhelming force or flee staying out of hyper limits gives you free reign to slip away.

Jonathan_S wrote:Perhaps there might be "decoys" available to the spider, capable of fooling at least temporarily the hunters. It's interesting to think about.

Depends on where they hunt. If they lurk just outside the hyper limit, looking to smash shipping as it approaches, they can quietly slip into hyper if a hunting party gets on their scent.


It wouldn't be their first option, because while translating up into hyper creates no signature in n-space returning from hyper does -- so they'd have to back way off too far away to be intercepted on reentry even if detected and waste months crawling up to the hyper limit again. But still, if your choices are to fight an overwhelming force or flee staying out of hyper limits gives you free reign to slip away.[/quote]
No, you sit on the alpha side of the wall. Space is 1/61st as large there, so the typical 2 light hour hyperlimit is a 4 light minute sphere on alpha. And if you are understand traffic flows of the system - like the vector where ships going to popular destination x usually use - you can be well within a light minute. If you know to within say 18 million km where ships usually cross the wall you can be in ENERGY RANGE of them as they emerge. 'Pop goes the freighter'.

Maybe the ship will be shielded by its wedge, but most of the time it won't be. And if its wedge is between the freighter and you the freighter just not going to see a spider even a light second away.

And, if you are a ship with whole bunch of say graser torpedoes, you can deploy them and put a whole lot of the alpha side inside energy range of your energy weapon platforms.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Depends on where they hunt. If they lurk just outside the hyper limit, looking to smash shipping as it approaches, they can quietly slip into hyper if a hunting party gets on their scent.


It wouldn't be their first option, because while translating up into hyper creates no signature in n-space returning from hyper does -- so they'd have to back way off too far away to be intercepted on reentry even if detected and waste months crawling up to the hyper limit again. But still, if your choices are to fight an overwhelming force or flee staying out of hyper limits gives you free reign to slip away.

No, you sit on the alpha side of the wall. Space is 1/61st as large there, so the typical 2 light hour hyperlimit is a 4 light minute sphere on alpha. And if you are understand traffic flows of the system - like the vector where ships going to popular destination x usually use - you can be well within a light minute. If you know to within say 18 million km where ships usually cross the wall you can be in ENERGY RANGE of them as they emerge. 'Pop goes the freighter'.

Maybe the ship will be shielded by its wedge, but most of the time it won't be. And if its wedge is between the freighter and you the freighter just not going to see a spider even a light second away.

And, if you are a ship with whole bunch of say graser torpedoes, you can deploy them and put a whole lot of the alpha side inside energy range of your energy weapon platforms.

I wonder how climbing to higher hyper bands works. We've seen ships do continuous drops from the Delta bands to n-space (Honor's convoy to Grayson in HotQ) and if you can do a continuous climb - not stopping until you reached you target band you might move through the subband of Alpha the enemy is lurking in in mere seconds. Maybe that's why we've never seen ambushers lurk in the low Alpha bands waiting for prey...

All ships in the Honorverse "are submarines"... but special purposed, that is, even the SD's, etc. are fighting in a 3-D space where a surface navy fights primarily in two. That said, we all realize that the SDs represent battleships, CLACs are like carriers, LACs like fighters, and everything in between a "ship" similar to an equivalent wet navy class. SD(P)s don't fit the mold, however -- and are remotely akin to aerial long range bombers, as there is no such thing as a "pod launching" ship of any kind except in space fiction.

That said, probably the closest analog to a "hunter killer submarine" is the RMN's Roland class destroyer, and they do use it similar to what you described, other than the "hover in hyper" idea. We're told that even the Havenite navy has trouble detecting them after they hyper in "way out-system" after they go to stealth, with roughly the "snowball's chance in hell" of localizing the ship and engaging before it can hyper out and hyper back in somewhere else in the same system.

SharkHunter wrote:All ships in the Honorverse "are submarines"... but special purposed, that is, even the SD's, etc. are fighting in a 3-D space where a surface navy fights primarily in two. That said, we all realize that the SDs represent battleships, CLACs are like carriers, LACs like fighters, and everything in between a "ship" similar to an equivalent wet navy class. SD(P)s don't fit the mold, however -- and are remotely akin to aerial long range bombers, as there is no such thing as a "pod launching" ship of any kind except in space fiction.

That said, probably the closest analog to a "hunter killer submarine" is the RMN's Roland class destroyer, and they do use it similar to what you described, other than the "hover in hyper" idea. We're told that even the Havenite navy has trouble detecting them after they hyper in "way out-system" after they go to stealth, with roughly the "snowball's chance in hell" of localizing the ship and engaging before it can hyper out and hyper back in somewhere else in the same system.

I would not entirely agree with you regarding the SD(P) having no wet navy equivalent as the Arsenal Ship concept does come closest. There is also the Russian Kirov-class Raketny Kreyser, especially the Admiral Nakhimov which is being retrofitted to carry launchers for 80 P-800 Oniks AShM in place of the 20 P-700 Granit previously mounted; (although I believe they were originally intended for a totally different function as Afloat Fleet Flagships).

Also, with regards to the submarine analogue ship class originally proposed at the start of this topic I seem to vaguely remember a similar kind of ship described in the Double Spiral War Novels by Warren Norwood. Does anyone else remember them?