Post League Eridani

No, the stealth homing missiles were in fact untrackable. They knew they were out there but nobody was able to get a firing solution on them. Which is how they got the ship.

Funny how the SLN didn’t buy them...

kzt wrote:No, the stealth homing missiles were in fact untrackable. They knew they were out there but nobody was able to get a firing solution on them. Which is how they got the ship.

Funny how the SLN didn’t buy them...

Perhaps they thought there were problems with getting any enemy to use the target transmitter that would allow the homing to work. At the start of the series the Solarian League does have the best stealth technology. I am not sure what specific improvements were made that meant their recon drones were easier to find by the end of the series. Was it just communication noise?

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the stealth homing missiles were in fact untrackable. They knew they were out there but nobody was able to get a firing solution on them. Which is how they got the ship.

Funny how the SLN didn’t buy them...

Perhaps they thought there were problems with getting any enemy to use the target transmitter that would allow the homing to work. At the start of the series the Solarian League does have the best stealth technology. I am not sure what specific improvements were made that meant their recon drones were easier to find by the end of the series. Was it just communication noise?

Is that really so? I'm surprised that such a huge and arrogant beast would even bother with stealth.

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:Perhaps they thought there were problems with getting any enemy to use the target transmitter that would allow the homing to work. At the start of the series the Solarian League does have the best stealth technology. I am not sure what specific improvements were made that meant their recon drones were easier to find by the end of the series. Was it just communication noise?

Is that really so? I'm surprised that such a huge and arrogant beast would even bother with stealth.

Battle Fleet probably didn't care but OFS and Frontier Fleet probably saw the value in good stealth systems.

kzt wrote:No, the stealth homing missiles were in fact untrackable. They knew they were out there but nobody was able to get a firing solution on them. Which is how they got the ship.

Funny how the SLN didn’t buy them...

But the book is clear that in that case they were only untraceable because someone had managed to get a homing beacon onto the targets which let them attack completely passively. When explaining why the SLN didn't buy them AoV said "The SLN Weapons Division, however, had taken one look at them, yawned, and passed, for they were useful only as ambush weapons against an unsuspecting foe. Worse, their slow speed made them sitting ducks when their seekers were forced to go active over the last portion of their attack run."

Hasan sidestepped the need for the seekers to go active by making them even more limited use by requiring that the foe also pre-planted homing beacon.

tlb wrote:Perhaps they thought there were problems with getting any enemy to use the target transmitter that would allow the homing to work. At the start of the series the Solarian League does have the best stealth technology. I am not sure what specific improvements were made that meant their recon drones were easier to find by the end of the series. Was it just communication noise?

Not sure they had the best stealth at the start of the series, although both they and most of the rest of the universe thought so. Remember that it was not untill after Byng's TF is captured mostly intact that Manticore realizes just how far behind SLN doctrine is and how poorly they use what is actually decent equipment. By end of the first war the PRH is probably using better stealth than the SLN.

Jonathan_S wrote:But the book is clear that in that case they were only untraceable because someone had managed to get a homing beacon onto the targets which let them attack completely passively. When explaining why the SLN didn't buy them AoV said "The SLN Weapons Division, however, had taken one look at them, yawned, and passed, for they were useful only as ambush weapons against an unsuspecting foe. Worse, their slow speed made them sitting ducks when their seekers were forced to go active over the last portion of their attack run."

Hasan sidestepped the need for the seekers to go active by making them even more limited use by requiring that the foe also pre-planted homing beacon.

Well, if you can accurately predict based on public navigational reference data where the manufacturing facility you are targeting will be then you really don't need a homing beacon. Inertial navigation systems are really a pretty solved problem.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But the book is clear that in that case they were only untraceable because someone had managed to get a homing beacon onto the targets which let them attack completely passively. When explaining why the SLN didn't buy them AoV said "The SLN Weapons Division, however, had taken one look at them, yawned, and passed, for they were useful only as ambush weapons against an unsuspecting foe. Worse, their slow speed made them sitting ducks when their seekers were forced to go active over the last portion of their attack run."

Hasan sidestepped the need for the seekers to go active by making them even more limited use by requiring that the foe also pre-planted homing beacon.

Well, if you can accurately predict based on public navigational reference data where the manufacturing facility you are targeting will be then you really don't need a homing beacon. Inertial navigation systems are really a pretty solved problem.

Agreed. But the SLN presumably wasn't interested in weapons that were only useful for ambush attacks on unsuspecting warships or hitting non-maneuvering infrastructure.

For the Buccaneer attacks I don't see any technical limitation that would have prevented them from successfully using those stealth attack drones if they'd bought a pile of them. (Though most of those stations couldn't have done anything even if active sensors had been used in the final minutes of the attack).

Not sure if those stealth drones would have been more effective in attacking Beowulf's infrastructure than the Hasta drone+missile combo design was. Probably depends on their endurance and whether the flight profile selected built up too large a vector to allow them to dodge the block-ships' wedges when those unexpectedly popped up in their way.

Jonathan_S wrote:Agreed. But the SLN presumably wasn't interested in weapons that were only useful for ambush attacks on unsuspecting warships or hitting non-maneuvering infrastructure.

Really? They spent a lot of time and money developing a tool they used to do that at Beowulf, instead of buying a COTS solution and making minor modifications.

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the stealth homing missiles were in fact untrackable. They knew they were out there but nobody was able to get a firing solution on them. Which is how they got the ship.

Funny how the SLN didn’t buy them...

But the book is clear that in that case they were only untraceable because someone had managed to get a homing beacon onto the targets which let them attack completely passively. When explaining why the SLN didn't buy them AoV said "The SLN Weapons Division, however, had taken one look at them, yawned, and passed, for they were useful only as ambush weapons against an unsuspecting foe. Worse, their slow speed made them sitting ducks when their seekers were forced to go active over the last portion of their attack run."

Hasan sidestepped the need for the seekers to go active by making them even more limited use by requiring that the foe also pre-planted homing beacon.

Reminds me of using the moon stone as a homing beacon in Yeltsin. Which, btw, I always thought it was quite interesting that such a tactic could be used in the Honorverse. Done to a freighter, yes. But done to a warship or a royal yacht in the Honorverse surprises me. These are warships that routinely lock down all emissions. Its like submarines failing to detect the emissions of homing beacons smuggled aboard -- unless programmed to activate at a certain time.