The Strategy of Technology

Reading House of Steel I get the impression that King Roger had been inspired by a 19 century old book of that title. (You might have noticed that Jerry Pournelle passed away recently). King Roger's strategy was to invest heavily in R&D to gain qualitative​ superiority over Haven. The steady stream of new weapons were NOT isolated, random inventions.

The SD(P) was NOT inspired by Honor Harrington's success with armed merchant cruisers in Silesia. Her Q ships were test beds to refine the design of SD!P)s.

The SD(P) was designed in anticipation of Apollo before they had the high bandwidth FTL comm to make it work.

FTL comm was the first useful hardware enabled by the program to develop Apollo.

What is also fascinating is that a teenaged Princess Elizebeth was aware of these super secret R&D programs that Admiral Alexander was unaware of.
Every time Honor visited the Queen after getting shot up, there were secrets that Beth could not tell her to encourage her.

These insights just add depth to King Roger and Queen Elizabeth.

PS,. Did I mention that I have a realtor who looks a lot like Pam Grier. Smart lady too.

interesting

i'd always taken it for granted that the q-ships were testing the pod system concept prior to using it in the SD(P) but the idea that they were anticipating apollo when they started the SD(P) program was not something that had occurred to me.

not completely sold on the idea but i see where you are coming from.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Reading House of Steel I get the impression that King Roger had been inspired by a 19 century old book of that title. (You might have noticed that Jerry Pournelle passed away recently). King Roger's strategy was to invest heavily in R&D to gain qualitative​ superiority over Haven. The steady stream of new weapons were NOT isolated, random inventions.

The SD(P) was NOT inspired by Honor Harrington's success with armed merchant cruisers in Silesia. Her Q ships were test beds to refine the design of SD(P)s.

The SD(P) was designed in anticipation of Apollo before they had the high bandwidth FTL comm to make it work.

FTL comm was the first useful hardware enabled by the program to develop Apollo.

Apollo was not conceptualized first, you first have to have the idea of FTL communication before you can have the idea of Apollo. In fact you have to have high bandwidth in FTL communication before you can consider Apollo and that came later.
Pods had been around for awhile, what made them effective was the addition of mass drivers to give an initial push to the missiles and Honor was definitely a test bed for that. Look at how Whitehaven rejected all those ideas, including the SD(P) as coming from Hemphill in chapter 2 of In Enemy Hands. However Honor said:

Next, the new ships of the wall you object to are a logical extrapolation of the armament I had in Silesia. Where, I might remind you, Sir, my squadron, operating as single units outside any mutual support range, captured or destroyed an entire pirate squadron—plus a Peep light cruiser, two heavy cruisers, and a pair of battlecruisers—for the loss of a single armed merchant cruiser. Certainly building a superdreadnought around a hollow core would be a radical departure, and BuShips agrees that the new design will result in some reduction in structural strength. But it will also allow each SD to carry just over five hundred ten-missile pods and fire a salvo of six of them every twelve seconds. That's over five thousand missiles, at the rate of three hundred per minute, from a single ship which will sacrifice about thirty percent of its conventional armament to fit them in.

The selling points for the SD(P) were the current advantages, not some possible future benefit.

I disagree.

My point here is that HOUSE OF STEEL makes it very explicit that all of the RMN's new weapons are the intentional fruits of a research and development program that had been initiated by King Roger even before he was king!

Anyone who has read Weber's WITH ONE STONE should understand that the basic concept for the grav pulse comm should be obvious. King Roger simply had the insight to initiate a program to develop analogs to impeller nodes that could be switched rapidly enough to yield the required bandwidth and the ultradense fusion bottles to power them.

The technical challenges of building MDMs are obviously related to the technologies needed for grav pulse comm.

King Rober actually discusses the need to develop new warships that can launch the new missiles in massive quantities that can be effective.

My point here is that all of these new weapons that surprised Honor Harrington and Hamish Alexander were NOT random, serendipitous developments. They were all the fruits of Project Gram which had been INTENTIONALLY developing a new warfare paradigm for half a century. King Roger and then Princess Elizebeth had been intentionally developing these technologies with a reasonably accurate accurate concept of the resulting weapons and ships for half a century.

I have no doubt that King Roger and Queen Elizebeth tasked project Gram to research other technologies that didnt bear fruit. I suspect that they also guided Project Gram to develop other, radically technologies that Weber has not recealed to us yet.

How about a Graser that can be propogated FTL with some varient of grav pulse comm?

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I disagree.

My point here is that HOUSE OF STEEL makes it very explicit that all of the RMN's new weapons are the intentional fruits of a research and development program that had been initiated by King Roger even before he was king!

Anyone who has read Weber's WITH ONE STONE should understand that the basic concept for the grav pulse comm should be obvious. King Roger simply had the insight to initiate a program to develop analogs to impeller nodes that could be switched rapidly enough to yield the required bandwidth and the ultradense fusion bottles to power them.

The technical challenges of building MDMs are obviously related to the technologies needed for grav pulse comm.

King Rober actually discusses the need to develop new warships that can launch the new missiles in massive quantities that can be effective.

My point here is that all of these new weapons that surprised Honor Harrington and Hamish Alexander were NOT random, serendipitous developments. They were all the fruits of Project Gram which had been INTENTIONALLY developing a new warfare paradigm for half a century. King Roger and then Princess Elizebeth had been intentionally developing these technologies with a reasonably accurate accurate concept of the resulting weapons and ships for half a century.

I have no doubt that King Roger and Queen Elizebeth tasked project Gram to research other technologies that didnt bear fruit. I suspect that they also guided Project Gram to develop other, radically technologies that Weber has not recealed to us yet.

How about a Graser that can be propogated FTL with some varient of grav pulse comm?

I do not disagreed that the research program set up by King Roger was very important to Manticore's fighting ability. However the short story that gives the genesis for FTL communication occurs in Honor's time after King Roger was dead. In Honor of the Queen FTL communication is at the rate of the early telegraph.
I just think you have the time line wrong. The SD(P) ships were developed before Saint Just's cease fire, while Apollo did not arrive until after the Haven restoration and resumption of hostilities.
Graser fire cannot be FTL because it is Gamma radiation - a high energy form of light.

tlb wrote:Apollo was not conceptualized first, you first have to have the idea of FTL communication before you can have the idea of Apollo. In fact you have to have high bandwidth in FTL communication before you can consider Apollo and that came later.

(bold mine)

I disagree about the need for high bandwidth. With the ACM as an intermediate processor, a bandwidth capable of 300bps or so would be more than sufficient to select from an array of preprogramed commands.

Miniaturizing a receiver (and transmitter) to fit in the ACM is far more important than bandwidth.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:My point here is that all of these new weapons that surprised Honor Harrington and Hamish Alexander were NOT random, serendipitous developments. They were all the fruits of Project Gram which had been INTENTIONALLY developing a new warfare paradigm for half a century. King Roger and then Princess Elizebeth had been intentionally developing these technologies with a reasonably accurate accurate concept of the resulting weapons and ships for half a century.

I'm not sure what you mean by "intentionally" with regards to any specific GRAM output. I very much doubt that they had any idea what they would come up with at the start. They did come up with some real losers, like TWTSNBN, and the initial driving force behind missile pods (a development of improved box launchers for expendable LACs.) I would seem to me that GRAM was a "fling a few shovels full at the barn wall and see what sticks" kind of operation -- no idea was too outrageous or impossible to be considered.

tlb wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The SD(P) was designed in anticipation of Apollo before they had the high bandwidth FTL comm to make it work.

FTL comm was the first useful hardware enabled by the program to develop Apollo.

Apollo was not conceptualized first, you first have to have the idea of FTL communication before you can have the idea of Apollo. In fact you have to have high bandwidth in FTL communication before you can consider Apollo and that came later.

I don't know that Apollo needs "high bandwidth" communication. For each target, the missile controllers need position & attitude, rates of change of those, and rates of change of those. Going the other way, they need to tell each missile where and when to explode, and which direction to point. That doesn't seem like a lot compared to two-way video.

Bill Woods wrote:

tlb wrote:The SD(P) was designed in anticipation of Apollo before they had the high bandwidth FTL comm to make it work.

FTL comm was the first useful hardware enabled by the program to develop Apollo.

Apollo was not conceptualized first, you first have to have the idea of FTL communication before you can have the idea of Apollo. In fact you have to have high bandwidth in FTL communication before you can consider Apollo and that came later.

I don't know that Apollo needs "high bandwidth" communication. For each target, the missile controllers need position & attitude, rates of change of those, and rates of change of those. Going the other way, they need to tell each missile where and when to explode, and which direction to point. That doesn't seem like a lot compared to two-way video.[/quote]

R&D does not work in a simple line. Chances are no one would have thought of Apollo if FTL communication hadn't been developed. Tech changes tend to come in bunches; that's how it really works.

But investing in it was a brilliant move by Roger. Many years after his death, it is still paying off.

WITH ONE STONE ends with the characters speculating about FTL comm. There is NO reference to King Roger (actually deceased), Queen Elizabeth or Sonja Hemphill being inspired by that incident. Readers should not be too quick to presume that this incident inspired the development of FTL comm. If anything they were worried that Honor might have inspired the PRH and the Andermandi to research a technology that Project Gramm already had on the verge of production. Captain Harrington might even have been warned not to use that trick again.

I can speak from experience. I once got an unfriendly visit from the FBI back in college because I had written a paper on the strategic implications of missile defense systems in which I had reverse engineered the Midgetman and MX missiles to accurately.

tlb wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I disagree.

My point here is that HOUSE OF STEEL makes it very explicit that all of the RMN's new weapons are the intentional fruits of a research and development program that had been initiated by King Roger even before he was king!

Anyone who has read Weber's WITH ONE STONE should understand that the basic concept for the grav pulse comm should be obvious. King Roger simply had the insight to initiate a program to develop analogs to impeller nodes that could be switched rapidly enough to yield the required bandwidth and the ultradense fusion bottles to power them.

The technical challenges of building MDMs are obviously related to the technologies needed for grav pulse comm.

King Rober actually discusses the need to develop new warships that can launch the new missiles in massive quantities that can be effective.

My point here is that all of these new weapons that surprised Honor Harrington and Hamish Alexander were NOT random, serendipitous developments. They were all the fruits of Project Gram which had been INTENTIONALLY developing a new warfare paradigm for half a century. King Roger and then Princess Elizebeth had been intentionally developing these technologies with a reasonably accurate accurate concept of the resulting weapons and ships for half a century.

I have no doubt that King Roger and Queen Elizebeth tasked project Gram to research other technologies that didnt bear fruit. I suspect that they also guided Project Gram to develop other, radically technologies that Weber has not recealed to us yet.

How about a Graser that can be propogated FTL with some varient of grav pulse comm?

I do not disagreed that the research program set up by King Roger was very important to Manticore's fighting ability. However the short story that gives the genesis for FTL communication occurs in Honor's time after King Roger was dead. In Honor of the Queen FTL communication is at the rate of the early telegraph.
I just think you have the time line wrong. The SD(P) ships were developed before Saint Just's cease fire, while Apollo did not arrive until after the Haven restoration and resumption of hostilities.
Graser fire cannot be FTL because it is Gamma radiation - a high energy form of light.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:WITH ONE STONE ends with the characters speculating about FTL comm. There is NO reference to King Roger (actually deceased), Queen Elizabeth or Sonja Hemphill being inspired by that incident. Readers should not be too quick to presume that this incident inspired the development of FTL comm. If anything they were worried that Honor might have inspired the PRH and the Andermandi to research a technology that Project Gramm already had on the verge of production. Captain Harrington might even have been warned not to use that trick again.

Re-reading the relevant paragraph from "With One Stone", I think your wrong.
After Sonja comes down hard on Cardones, she goes through the tech team 4 after action repot, she lists several points "solved the crippler problem", "ended that particular threat to SKM shipping", "given the Peeps a sore nose", and in the grand scheme of things saved Fearless and the crew (which feels very much like an after thought ) and returns IAN cruiser defusing a possibly tension with the Andies she goes onto thing about a third bird....
Extract from "With One Stone"
The point was Harrington had found a way to send a signal to the Andies, and since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light and were detectable from much further away.... especially if the could combine this IDEA with the new high-yield fusion bttles and superconductors being designed for the next generation electronic warfare drones and maybe throw in something from the compact LAC Beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BuWeaps...."


This shows that a new concept, combined with the work already going on in both SKM covert and overt R&D efforts, which Sonja was heavily involved with, resulted in the first practial FTL com system, what we don't now is the time gap between "With One Stone" and "HoQ" and the battle in the Grayson Star system. Its clear from how the RMN officers talk about it, it is a new system (since Truman is uncomfortable about using as its still on the official Secrets List, and that Alistair McKeon played test bed during its development). Which shows an astonishing turn around from theoretical R&D into usable deployable hardware.