Information I'd love to know

An outline of the last book.

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No, wholesale would be Vanessa Murakuma. (Home Hive 2 destruction, The Shiva Option ch. 32)[/quote]

I agree. But then again what do we mean by dangerous? Vanessa killed a lot of bugs. Honor killed lots of people.

And rulers can order people killed.

By the way, a lot of what has been said about Elizabeth was wrong. She might be stubborn but she certainly showed a lot of flexibility in a lot of ways, particularly in more recent books. Yes, she hated the Havenites but had good reason for it.

ETA -- the Lenny Dets.

or -- when will the shit hit the fan?

or -- when will the Dets collect on a few debts?

I'm looking for a resource or explanation on how radar systems work both fundamentally and strategically. In particular I can't recall why, how or when the delay in seeing someone takes place in some circumstances but not others. I only know that for some reason when entering a new system from hyperspace there is a delay or lag before they can spot targets, perhaps due to vast distances and light travel? - but when a ship has already been in system for a while it can spot newcomers more or less instantaneously - perhaps due to a radar net being setup in the system beforehand?

Not sure if I've articulated what I wanted to ask correctly but I think that gets my question across. Basically I just want a resource or in detail explanation of that aspect of space travel and strategy. And for that matter I wouldn't mind knowing more specifics on communications either if anyone would like to answer or point me in the right direction.

Scope, I'll take a hack at this. We won't be including the new in-system data FTL the manties have, because no one in universe has figured out how to sensorize it. Anyhow, sensors...

Come in two varieties. Active, like radar, and Passive, like thermographic cameras.

Active sensors work by shooting out a pulse of energy, which then reflects off of objects and returns to the sensor. For radar, this is radio waves, for lidar it is lasers, active sonar it is sound (obviously not used in space) and so forth.

When the reflected wave/beam returns, you know that for one pulse there was an object of X size at Y range along Z azimuth. With multiple pulses you can calculate speed by the locational change. The issues of generating and receiving reflections while not falsely identifying positives is typically what limits the range on an active sensor. The converse is that "Stealth" essentially works by making sure that the reflections in question are so weak/small that they don't pop out as a thing.

We'll just assume that in the honorverse they've worked out those kinks.

They still have the speed of light problem, hence the delay. The radio waves, lasers, what have you still need to travel across massive distances. Light from the Sun to Mars for instance, takes twelve and a half minutes to travel. Assuming you had a sensor in the sun, the reflection from your ping would get back in another twelve and a half minutes.

For the round trip, you are blind at that range for 25 minutes, and then you are getting 25 minute old data and extrapolating on where things are. At say, the range to Neptune, you are now dealing with an 8 hour variation of that.

Hence why when you jump in, you cannot see. Incidentally, if the defenders are already lashing that area of space with radio waves, they get a hit immediately as you jump in, they only have to wait for the info has to travel to them. So if the defenders were on Mars and already blaring away with sensors, they'll "see" you twelve and a half minutes before you "see" them. On Neptune, they get a four hour advantage.

The attacker however, will instantly know that he has been detected, and from more or less along a given azimuth. So he is not so much blind as he does not have the size or range to the defender until his sensors complete a cycle (unless he has an excellent enemy technical information database and the computing power to extrapolate from).


Passive sensors work in recieve only. Like thermographic cameras, passive sonar (again, irrelevant to space) or just plain old optics. They do not need to send a signal out. The issues with range are usually in managing to focus out far enough and wide enough to be valuable. Again, we'll assume the honorverse has figured that out to whatever extent RFC has decided they have.

In this case, it is a one way transmission. If you look at the moon, your eyeball or telescope is not sending data, just receiving reflected light. Likewise if they are looking at you Both sides can see each other on passive at the exact same time, assuming perfectly equal quality of sensors.

What kills you with radar (or similar) is that the signal drops with the 4th power of range. So you need enormous amounts of radiated power to pick up a ship at more than trivial Horonverse range.

Initial detection method in the Honorverse is almost always passive gravitic sensors as the wavefront from the signal moves at 62C.

David pretty much ignores thermal data. In fact Honorverse ships and missiles would be super bright given that the background universe is at 4 K and a ship with life support needs to be in the 280 K range and the bigger the target the more radiating surface. With a running reactor (or plasma capacitors) you would have a very hot target from the radiators, particularly when you can't magically dump the heat into the wedge.

Thanks so much for the information guys. You were able to clear up any questions I had, and then some, in regards to relevant info on sensor mechanics. And I'm suddenly glad I asked because I'm only on book 6 and I can tell that a clearer understanding of this subject will only increase my overall enjoyment as I can understand better the strategies and tactics that Weber so lovingly lays out for us.

In addition I recently discovered the maps and glossary over on GotShifted which has certainly been illuminating and a lot of fun to look over while listening to the audios. One further question that sparks my curiosity is where exactly Beowulf might be located? As I understand its supposedly in the Sigma Draconis system but for some reason it doesn't show up on those great little maps despite it being a seemingly significant player and body in the Honorverse. Am I missing something?

Also if anyone cares to take a shot at explaining how communications work technically and any effect that may have on strategy and tactics I would very much appreciate it.

Distances from Sigma Draconis didn't work IIRC.

Communications come in local and strategic form.

Locally, everyone starts the series with light speed commo. Which works just the way it does in the real world. Essentially, any data, be it a message to your subordinates, getting targeting data sent back to you from a drone, or updating a missile with new attack guidance, takes as long as it takes light. Since the ranges involved are solar system spanning, this can range from a just over a second when objects are at grazer range, to minutes at powered missile range, to potentially hours across a given system.

The practical effect is that you have to make bigger and broader decisions the further away you are. On everything. There comes a point where trying to control a missile with data three minutes old is less preferably than letting its on-board guidance take over, for instance. Or trying to have a conversation with another ship becomes a series of video post cards with hours between each exchange.

Later in the series, people mess around with local FTL data. This, in effect, changes you from the terrestrial equivalent of signaling with flags, bugles, and couriers to using radios.

Strategically, it takes ships to go faster than light. Ships take weeks, months, to travel between systems unless you have a wormhole. So the people back home are always weeks to months behind. While this is obviously fictional physics (Or, at least, undiscovered physics), the effect is to recreate the age of sail when merchants, diplomats, governors, commanders, etc had to be trusted to act relatively independently of the home office and had great freedom of action (or just as often, had stifling delays when waiting for guidance). Amongst other things, it means it might be weeks before you even know a war has started, or whether you won or lost a battle.