Not to flog a dead horse, but I totally agree that grav lances are an impractical and inefficient weapon system that has no place in any space battle.
However, I think it would be clever if the application of grav lance tech helped make a breakthrough with impeller systems, for eg with the spider drive. Aren't they applications of similar technology ie focussing impeller wedges into varied shapes? I hope with Foraker and Hemphill in Bolthole, the Grand Alliance might see the new applications of grav lance tech, with both having the missing pieces of the puzzle to crack the spider drive.
Even if this case isn't feasible, hopefully the 20-year time skip until the next novel (can't wait for it!) will mean more tech breakthroughs on the scale of Apollo and which will not be nerfed like Mycroft was just to create an artificial vulnerability that the Mesan Alignment again managed to exploit. (I thought Mycroft didn't have the vulnerabilities of Moriarty where the missile control platforms could be identified while starting up. The Mesans did basically the same thing that Manticore did in Suarez and Lovat for Operation Sanskrit, only in the Beowulf System).
Theemile wrote:Conversation Topic: Grav Lances - aka The Weapon that should not be Named (TWTSNBN)
Common Post: Posters are positing new uses for a Grav Lances or advanced Grav Lances
Discussion Outcome: David has been inundated by so many ideas for Grav Lances that the device has pretty much been dropped from the series.
The use of the Grav Lance on the Courageous was not new, the device already had existed for years and normally was installed on Capital ships which had the spare mass to carry a system like the Grav Lance which had little chance of being used. The new concept was to mount it on a small hull, which could turn the ship into a Captal ship killer. In production, this was intended to be a CA, but the only available testbed at the time was the soon to be retired CL, the Courageous. Unfortunately, the tests showed that the idea was a 1 trick pony – after it worked the first time, any possible light ship which looked like it was about to attempt such a maneuver was hammered by every opposing capital ship.
It must be noted, the Grav Lance is not a weapon system. It is an engineering system that uses a ship's wedge to temporarily destabilize and drop the sidewall of an opposing ship. An additional weapons system must then be used to damage/destroy the opposing ship – in the case of the Courageous, this was an array of energy torpedoes, which otherwise would have been useless against sidewalls.
The Grav Lance requires the drive system of a hull of about 85Ktons at a minimum to function – it cannot work without all the hardware necessary to generate the ship’s wedge. It also has a max range of less than 150,000 KM –less than ½ the range of an energy torpedo, 1/4rd the range of Lasers, 1/8th the range of Grasers. Any ship attempting to use them had to survive through missile range and 85% of energy range to do so. In Honorverse Naval terms, this is the equivalent of knife fighting in a (small) coat closet.
Manticorian miniaturization and research since 1900 has not overall affected the above stats. It cannot be placed on a significantly smaller hull, it cannot have a noticeably longer range, it will never do physical damage on its own, it will never drop a warship’s wedge. Manticore did not launch the intended CA class with the Lances, did not install lances in any SD(p) classes and removed the lances from some of the existing capital ship classes in refits over the years as it simply was never used as energy battles became rarer and rarer in combat.
Because of the above, The Grav Lance will never be placed on an economical mine, will never be placed in a reasonably sized missile, and will never be mounted on a LAC. It will never destroy ships on it’s own. It will never have millions of KM’s of range. It probably will never be used in combat again.
