The big problem of late Honorverse

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We've discussed this, either in this thread or in another. It's a major intelligence failure in the MAlign's part, indeed, but we found mitigating factors:

1. it happened only after Haven kicked the Solarian contractors out, so the MAlign lost their most direct source of intel on the war
2. like everyone else, they probably thought the number of missiles fired was exaggerated upwards
3. the SLN's actual capabilities were unknown, since they hadn't actually fought anyone in too long
4. "quantity is a quality of its own"

The Malign continued to have direct sources in the combatants after the Solarian contractors were gone, for example: the agent in Haven that supplied the nanotech assassin to dispose of the ambassador that helped restart the war and however they got the plans for Mistletoe that inspired the Silver Bullets. If there were not more sources for the war capabilities, then that is truly a failing.

Given their remaining direct sources (however attenuated) they should have known about the evolution of pod warfare and the resulting increase in missile control links.

The Malign was totally responsible for the destruction of the SLN's intelligence capability and the mindset that saw war gaming as a way to reinforce false confidence. It was a major change when the war gaming parameters were changed to make the computer opponent at least as good as the SLN side.

It is true that until the first meeting between a SL warship and a RMN warship, then would have been some anxiety about the outcome; but given the range and volume of fire disparity (not even counting the qualitative increase resulting from Apollo), that outcome was predictable.

As for quality versus quantity; it is true that the Zulu Army had an opening victory at the Battle of Isandlwana, but that was followed by the defeat of a large Zulu army at Rorke's Drift by a small force of British troops. The initial victory was the result of running out of ammunition by the British, which eliminated the technological advantage. One hope for the Yawata Strike is that it would cause the RMN to run out of their new missiles.

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:Interesting to see that carrying a full load of pods fully doubles the mass of an Agamemnon.

Yup. General consensus here is that a Mk23/16 pod masses somewhere between 3000 and 5000 tons, based on the stated mass of the missiles and the grav drivers, reactor, plasma ducts, attitude control system and all the other things needed.

IIRC, the pod load also costs a significant proportion of the cost of the complete warship.

Assuming that conservation of momentum applies to grab drivers, what is the velocity of the missile pod after it launches its missiles?

What is the average acceleration applied to the missile pod?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We've discussed this, either in this thread or in another. It's a major intelligence failure in the MAlign's part, indeed, but we found mitigating factors:

1. it happened only after Haven kicked the Solarian contractors out, so the MAlign lost their most direct source of intel on the war
2. like everyone else, they probably thought the number of missiles fired was exaggerated upwards
3. the SLN's actual capabilities were unknown, since they hadn't actually fought anyone in too long
4. "quantity is a quality of its own"

I also wonder how tight the MAlign control of the League really was. They had been slowly building up to this confrontation for decades - pushing here, prodding there, almost entirely unnoticed behind the scenes.

Could they have really stopped the momentum they'd been encouraging without bringing their manipulation into the spotlight? (Or at least defusing the tensions to the point where it would be very hard to rebuild it)

Yeah, they probably could have avoided the specific provocation that set Byng off (blowing the station) - but he's such a hothead and they'd stoked up the confrontation so much that it seems all too likely that something would have set him off and triggered the crisis. (Kind of like the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand kicked off WWI -- but it couldn't have unless the underlying tensions were already high enough to make war likely in the first place. If he'd avoided assassination odds are something else would have triggered a version of WWI within a year or two)

Even if they'd had an inkling they may have thought that shaking the League was better than exposing themselves by the fairly blatant actions that might be necessary to prevent the confrontation.

tlb wrote:The Malign continued to have direct sources in the combatants after the Solarian contractors were gone, for example: the agent in Haven that supplied the nanotech assassin to dispose of the ambassador that helped restart the war and however they got the plans for Mistletoe that inspired the Silver Bullets. If there were not more sources for the war capabilities, then that is truly a failing.

But they seem to have lost their ins with the technical side and Peep naval intelligence. Yeah they had agents, but they seem to be on the outside of the system - so they'd be getting mostly what the 'man in the street' got.

And they got reports of Mistletoe; they didn't get the plans. Otherwise they'd have had the microfusion reactors and high bandwidth FTL comms; and not had to mess with solar panel arrays to keep their silver bullet's capacitors charged. But simply the reports of the effective use of armed long endurance RDs is enough to inspire Silver Bullet. (Though it's hardly a new idea since League naval contractors tried unsuccessfully to sell the idea to the SLN as a long range attack method against warships. (Then sold them to the Peeps instead; where StateSec gave them to Masada to try to assassinate the Queen)

Having a 200,000,000 K reactor in your super stealthy drone has certain drawbacks...

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Assuming that conservation of momentum applies to grab drivers, what is the velocity of the missile pod after it launches its missiles?

What is the average acceleration applied to the missile pod?

Is the pod still being tractored at that point by the mothership? If so, then the momentum is conserved across the whole 8-million-ton body. If it's not, then you're right, the pod will be flying backwards due to the launch itself. But the pod launch mechanism isn't going to impart much momentum/velocity on the missiles: there's no reason for big rails to fling them out, as there's no wedge for them to clear in the first place. The missiles can bring up their wedges as soon as they're out of each other's range and accelerate themselves. At that point, you only conserve momentum with the alpha wall.

By the way, given the figures for missile load mass, what's the mass of an empty SD(P)?

Jonathan_S wrote:But they seem to have lost their ins with the technical side and Peep naval intelligence. Yeah they had agents, but they seem to be on the outside of the system - so they'd be getting mostly what the 'man in the street' got.

And they got reports of Mistletoe; they didn't get the plans. Otherwise they'd have had the microfusion reactors and high bandwidth FTL comms; and not had to mess with solar panel arrays to keep their silver bullet's capacitors charged. But simply the reports of the effective use of armed long endurance RDs is enough to inspire Silver Bullet. (Though it's hardly a new idea since League naval contractors tried unsuccessfully to sell the idea to the SLN as a long range attack method against warships. (Then sold them to the Peeps instead; where StateSec gave them to Masada to try to assassinate the Queen)

By the way, Mistletoe was Manticoran technology and the MAlign never infiltrated the deepest technical segments of the RMN (Project Gram, HMSS Weyland, etc.). They were never going to get microfusion reactors and high BW FTL from the RMN. They were hoping to get from the PRN, but after the Solarian technical experts were kicked out, that window closed too. So the MAlign has to develop those on its own and we've seen them comment on how long it's taking and how difficult it's been.

One thing that does worry me though was that the MAlign knew about Mycroft being deployed to Beowulf. That's technology developed only after the Grand Alliance was founded. And what Gweon told Kingsford it was was indeed very close to the truth. We don't know if they knew for sure what Mycroft was or if they just guessed right, but it's still worrying that they knew of the existence in the first place.

The MA came from Beowulf. Do you think that every single supporter left for Mesa? If you do, would you like to buy a bridge?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Is the pod still being tractored at that point by the mothership? If so, then the momentum is conserved across the whole 8-million-ton body. If it's not, then you're right, the pod will be flying backwards due to the launch itself. But the pod launch mechanism isn't going to impart much momentum/velocity on the missiles: there's no reason for big rails to fling them out, as there's no wedge for them to clear in the first place. The missiles can bring up their wedges as soon as they're out of each other's range and accelerate themselves. At that point, you only conserve momentum with the alpha wall.

But when we were introduced to towed pods the books explitily points out how the new lightweight grav launchers eliminated the problems with the old pods, described as

The Short Victorious War Ch 17 wrote:The old pods' launchers had lacked the powerful mass-drivers which gave warships' missiles their initial impetus. That, in turn, gave them a lower initial velocity, and since their missiles had exactly the same drives as any other missile, they couldn't make up the velocity differential unless the ship-launched birds were stepped down to less than optimal power settings. If you didn't step your shipboard missiles down, you lost much of the saturation effect because the velocity discrepancy effectively split your launch into two separate salvos. Yet if you did step them down, the slower speed of your entire launch not only gave the enemy more time to evade and adjust his ECM, but also gave his active defenses extra tracking and engagement time.

So they're apparently throwing the missiles fairly hard.

Also they do want to get the 10+ missiles quickly spread far enough to safely bring up their wedges. And that's multiple km separation - even with 3 dimensions to work with quickly getting a multi-kilometer separation takes a fair bit of velocity - even if in the era of MDMs the base velocity of the missile became nearly irrelivant.

The Alignment had structured it's plans such that Haven would take Manticore -Manticore was not supposed to be much of a bump in the Haven road- but it didn't go that way.

Alignment did a great job screwing around with the SLN at all levels, particuarly the intelligence and analysis areas and it would appear that a lot to the tech development that actualy made it's way to the SLN was comming from Technodyne. Technodyne being a conduit of Aligment tec to the SLN. Consider the Cataphracts. Sure, they got used 1st in the attack on Torch and were fed to Monica BEFORE the SLN showes them as something their warships are carrying.

That Haven had gotten so much better wasn't such a worry to the Alignment until th Peoples Republic of Haven got retaken by Prithart and friends and returned to being the Republic of Haven. The Alignment still wasn't too worried as the plan was still being moved to have Haven strike at Manticore and take the system....that didn't work out.
So, then Manticore has yet another weapons system- Apollo- rolled out and the Alighment still has hope that Haven- with an opening being offered to them (and because the Alignment has no idea that Harrington is going on a PEACE mission to Haven with her fleet parked just outside the hyperlimit as "encouragement"- and so they have continued the too early rollout of Oyster Bay to hit just Manticore and Grayson.

How was the Alignment supposed to figure on Pritichard offering an alliance with Manticore ----Zilwicky and friend having brought the information from Meas about the Aliance and all the data is starting to jell with the assination attemtempts (some successful, some not) susing the nannie- and suddenly the universe isn't the nice sandbox the Alignment has been carefully grooming for centuries.

The SLN, given it's absolute size, should have still been able to devistate though not conquer Haven after Haven broke itself taking Mantiore....but that war didn't do that to Haven and it has progressed through the combat with Manticore while the SLN was standing still. Worse, the SLN had been manipulated to not even attempt to learn from what was going on out in the Haven quadrant.

So, even having been give very improved Cataphacts, the SLN has no clue the kind of woodchipper it was about to feed it's combat forces into. Not only were it's communications lines too long, it was institutionaly incapable of looking at what it was getting (and that was being heavily doctored and misdirected) so it thought that all those SDs were still the key to dominating everything in space.

Oops. So 1st Manticore soundly defeats (though greatly outnumbered) everything they have thrown at them by the SLN - who gets effectively NO usable information back (no ships get home and only a couple of SLN officers set with notes from Manticore (and those get stuck at Gaynmead etc) and then the SLN goes for the Manticore system to find the GA there (and the Alignment sticks the knife into Fillerta) and ......Kingsford is presented with acceptable proof that the SLN has been suckered and it's not by Manticore
Harrington demonstrates that the SLN is little better than useless junk in modern combat and the SLN.....ISN"T going to explode but get reshaped.

The Alignment made a few too many miscalculations. Next round is 20+ years from now.