cthia wrote:cthia wrote:It seems that quite a few
Holes in SLN Intel are continuing to be filled. In one of the snippets a SL officer specifically commented on the new data on Manty tech they'd gotten. One is the ballistic component of Manty missiles to be added to the list. Albeit, they haven't quite gotten a handle on all of the ramifications of FTL. Now for the question. . .
I don't think it is acceptable, but
why isn't it prudent for the RMN to kill everything in-system to prevent that knowledge from escaping -- should the cavalry come soon enough? Why wouldn't destruction to protect military secrets be acceptable under the spoils of war? Sort of like. . .
"I can tell you - or show you - about MDMs, but then I'd have to kill you."
IINM, isn't Megan the first to reveal the capability? And she's offering the SLN a chance to flee with intel. I understand she has no choice, but if the cavalry comes, should she divulge that bit of info?
Anyone privy to real world examples?
runsforcelery wrote:No. It is neither legal nor morally acceptable and would be considered a war crime by anyone with a functioning brain.
Scrubbing computers of useful tactical data is one thing. Simply lining up your prisoners and shooting them in the head because they might have learned something you really wish they hadn't is about as reprehensible as moral leprosy comes. There might be some instance --- like, for example, "If I don't kill this one guy or 'disappear' this small crew of observers ISIS will find itself in possession of nuclear warheads" --- in which letting them go would be even more reprehensible than killing them out of hand. Difficult for me to imagine one where the alternatives would be stark enough to even begin to justify that. Weapons performance --- especially when (a) there's not one damned thing the other side can do about it and (b) anyone with a working brain will already be allowing for the possibility that you have the capability (i.e., "Yes! They can incorporate a ballistic phase!") --- does not fall under that heading.
It certainly doesn't in the eyes of the SEM of Manticore or anyone wearing its uniform, though. Unless, of course, some total sociopath has somehow made it past all the psych boards undetected.
Now, if Megan had enough firepower to compel them to surrender or face destruction --- that is, if she physically had the power to destroy them if they didn't surrender as opposed to having enough firepower to compel them to abort the operation and withdraw --- then she could demand they do just that and be justified in continuing to fire until they did surrender or they were all destroyed. That is rather different from what you seem to be suggesting here, however.
I understand.
I also wholeheartedly agree, though I was hardly suggesting it. I was enquiring about the formal legality/illegality of the tactic because of . . . baggage. . .
I also know it would be outside of measures the RMN would ascribe to, but I'm not quite sure it's black and white or cut and dry. At least not to other military forces.
The first thing that comes to mind is - now I apologize for bringing the boobtube into it, but - scouts in the olden days were chased and killed.
But on a more serious note, I recall the
Soviets shooting down a Korean airliner in . . . 1983, where 269 passengers were onboard after tailing it for over two hours, for fear that it was a spy plane taking photos. There have been several "I thought it was a spy" incidents like that over the years. It
was denounced as brutal and barbaric by the Western world, but still, it isn't unheard of. There was also
Korean Flight 007 the Soviets claimed was on a spy mission.
A US warship downed an Iranian Airbus killing 290 passengers. The line simply seems blurred to me.
To be sure, I wasn't condoning it, or even think the RMN should apply the tactic, I simply recall the tactic
appearing to be used and there doesn't seem to ever be any repercussions. So I'm not sure if it is an actual war crime or simply frowned upon.
It appears to be a grey area when military secrets are called into question, even when the victims are innocent, hapless civilians.
::shrug::Late edit:I also seem to recall there being collateral civilian damage from the US targeting a downed military plane in a war zone to maintain its secrets. Can't recall the documentary right off hand.
'Course, that was accidental.
It's not an "accident" when you shoot prisoners or blow up surrendered ships with their crews on board to conceal the performance specs of a weapon in general use. Chasing down scouts to prevent them from getting back with critical tactical or strategic information is something else. As long as the scout is free and trying to evade, he remains an enemy combatant and you're completely justified under the rules of war in trying to capture or kill him any way you can.
After you've captured him, he's protected under a slew of interstellar conventions unless you happened to catch him in civilian dress pretending he's not a soldier.
Spies, as opposed to scouts, come under a rather different heading.
Neither of them conceivably applies to Yountz or the remaining Solarian ships at Hypatia.
I reiterate, Megan would have been well within her rights to try to run her bluff further by demanding that the Sollies surrender, abandon ship, and ride their life pods down to the planetary surface under threat of additional attacks. She wouldn't have
gotten it (or not, at least, without proving that she could repeat the process multiple times which probably would have required more missiles than she had), but she could legitimately have demanded it.
She wasn't going to push her bluff that far when the penalty if she got called would be millions of Hypatian deaths she might avoid by giving Yountz a way out. And once she gave him that way out,
she was obligated to abide by her offer rather than suddenly trying to kill them all to protect the knowledge that --- Gasp! --- the M-16 was a dual-drive missile that could insert a lengthy ballistic phase into its flight profile and attack with far more accuracy at extreme range than the Sollies could.
Except for the Iranian airliner you referenced, I believe that every one of the aircraft shootdowns you listed occurred only when --- according to the party that did the shooting, at least --- the aircraft in question had both violated national airspace
and violated restricted air space marked as "closed" for security reasons (with the warning that violators were subject to being shot down; the US has airspace just like that of its own) by the nation in question. I'm not saying that makes it a good thing to shoot down a plane with 2-300 passengers on board. I'm saying that assuming the facts were as presented by the party who shot them down, international law was on their side and the aircraft had no legitimate reason to be where it was, which makes the "we thought it was espionage" argument far stronger.
Uniformed military personnel engaged in open warfare with a nation state have rather more rights than that, and summary executions for matters of operational convenience or the security of weapons capabilities are clear violations of international law, as witness the Malmedey Massacre in WW II and the way it was treated postwar.
IIRC, the airliner shootdown was largely the result of the Aegis system doing what it was told to do rather than what it's operators
thought they were telling it to do. The airliner wasn't the intended target at all. Or, rather, the warship's sensors and fire control picked it up, it was identified as an Iranian F-14 (
not a civilian passenger aircraft), and the ship launched.
