?

cthia wrote:Thanks, everyone.

I asked because the narration in UH says "...since a missile can't generate a sidewall..."

Whether it is possible or not, an impeller is a requirement? So, the slower graser torp has no chance of acquiring extra protection in the future?

tlb wrote:<snip>

Does the fusion plant need an operator? If so, then it is out of contention. Remembering that the defensive graser is replacing a single-shot mine, it is already 4 or 5 times as flexible as the object it replaced. With enough of them, it would not be necessary to recharge until after the action was over and the mines might still be present in reserve.

Theemile wrote:But adding an (already) stealthy, self contained RMN micro-fusion reactor would give slow drip recharging capability for the Graser in a small self contained package that required only periodic maintenance.

tlb wrote:I remember there was some discussion that emissions from the reactor would mean that it was not stealthy. However that can be papered over with more anti-radiation shielding. Anyway in a missile the wedge is more prominent and also serves to hide the reactor.

UH wrote:“Well, most of the hardware was pretty much off-the-shelf. We’d already been tweaking the torpedo’s drive for you, and the gravitic sensors are out of our own grav com R&D. The biggest problem was power supply, really. My people haven’t been able to duplicate the Manty micro fusion plants yet. I think they’re on the track, and I’m actually predicting that they’ll pull it off in the next T-year or so, but it won’t be any sooner than that. Assuming Collin’s people don’t manage to steal the plans for us. Any chance of that?”

“’Fraid not.” Benjamin shook his head, his expression much less cheerful than it had been.

UH wrote:“I wish I could say I was surprised,” Daniel sighed, then shrugged. “Well, knowing something can be done is two thirds of figuring out how to do it. I wish we’d been paying more attention to the hardware side of things and less to the political and diplomatic side when Collin set up his networks, but I think we’ve at least identified the right paths forward for a lot of their stuff. Now it’s just a case of hammering through, and God knows we’ve got enough motivation!”

He smiled with very little amusement, and Benjamin nodded in both understanding and agreement.

Daniel’s researchers had yet to duplicate most of the cornucopia of hardware which had flowed out of Roger Winton’s long-term prewar R&D. In fact, they hadn’t even identified all of it yet. As Daniel had just suggested, they were making progress—in fact, their rate of progress continued to increase—but they remained far behind and he was unhappily certain the Manties weren’t resting on their laurels. Worse, now they were comparing notes with Haven. There was a reason Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker were right at the top of Collin’s Assassinate As Soon As Possible list. If there were two navies in the galaxy who understood the need to stay ahead of the technological curve, it was the RMN and the RHN, especially under Hemphill and Foraker. It was unlikely, to say the least, that the Alignment was going to overcome the edge in their hardware anytime soon.
“Well, without micro plants of our own,” Daniel continued, “what my people had to do was to throw together a new fuselage big enough to let us graft together the power packs of two Wraiths. It’s…large.”

Benjamin snorted. The Wraith was the Mesan Alignment Navy’s equivalent of the Manty Ghost Rider recon platforms, and without Manticore’s new stealth systems—and their damned thumbnail fusion plants—building something equally hard to see had been a challenge. The good news was that the spider drive’s gravitic signature was incredibly faint compared to conventional impellers, so it didn’t require as much stealthing in the first place. The bad news was that the drive itself took up a lot of space and its plasma-charged accumulators took up almost as much. From the sketchy information they’d been able to assemble on Ghost Rider, a Wraith was probably at least seventy percent bigger than a current generation Manticoran recon drone. It was also much slower and lacked Ghost Rider’s FTL capability, but it was probably at least as difficult to detect, and indications were that its onboard sensors were a bit better even than the RMN’s current hardware.

But if Daniel was talking about something big enough to carry a pair of Wraith power packs, then he was talking about something which was probably at least two or three times as big as the MAN’s graser torpedo…which was already nearly twice the size of a Manticoran Mark 23 MDM. In which case, calling it “large” was something of an understatement, especially from the perspective of the man whose navy would be trying to deploy the damned things.

cthia wrote:Bold gets the gold. My reading comprehension fails me here. Are they saying they're on the right track to a lot of the Manty stuff, or a lot of their own stuff? I guess in the end they are one and the same.

Duplicating Ghost Rider??? Aww shi—!


And. Let's not forget that a certain sexy techno-dweeb said, "The mortal enemy of perfect is good enough."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:In Corporate Strategy, we learn something called "First Mover Advantage." It applies to the company that first develops a technology or product and markets it. When managed correctly and unless there's a disruption, a first mover advantage sustains itself, since the mover will still be ahead when subsequent products and technologies are deployed. The competitors will need less R&D, but unless they find something to undercut the advantage, they'll never be ahead.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Bold gets the gold. My reading comprehension fails me here. Are they saying they're on the right track to a lot of the Manty stuff, or a lot of their own stuff? I guess in the end they are one and the same.

Duplicating Ghost Rider??? Aww shi—!


And. Let's not forget that a certain sexy techno-dweeb said, "The mortal enemy of perfect is good enough."

No, they're saying that they've identified what makes most (but not all!) Manty hardware tick. Duplicating something once you know it's possible is the 20% left and mostly the D in R&D. This is especially aided by espionage, both in Haven's case during the wars and in the MAlign's case now. But how quickly they can get there is an unknown. After all, 20% of a 40-year effort is 8 years.

In Corporate Strategy, we learn something called "First Mover Advantage." It applies to the company that first develops a technology or product and markets it. When managed correctly and unless there's a disruption, a first mover advantage sustains itself, since the mover will still be ahead when subsequent products and technologies are deployed. The competitors will need less R&D, but unless they find something to undercut the advantage, they'll never be ahead.

The same applies here and your quoted passage mentions it. (And, after all, "strategy" comes from the Greek strategós στρατηγός, which means "army leader" and is the rank equivalent to General) The MAlign is aware that the RMN and RHN will not let their advantage slip and will continue to develop new technologies. Even more difficult, with the cessation of hostilities, much less of this HW is going to be making out to the field where it could be lost and analysed.

PS: on Wraith's sensors being better than a GR, there's the fact that it is twice as big. With a bigger area, you can have more sensors available, even if you can't dedicate more volume to them.