SOS - Control Links and Salvos

Sorry guys, my OCD acts up on certain things. The same form of OCD, in this case, which—once upon a time—made me cringe at the irony that an auxiliary ship loaded to the gills with missiles could die with them all, because it couldn't fire any of them. Thank God the author sympathizes with OCD and created the David Taylor class. I'm still managing my ailment.

Several thousand missiles died along with Nike, according to Theemile. That doesn't rub any of you the wrong way? Brrr! Someone please get that damn Cat off the blackboard!

It is unfortunate she couldn't actually use the single Hermes Buoy in the system, at this point, like what will be possible in the future.

I suspect the initial concept came from Foraker,” she said, “but the final proposal has Sonja’s fingerprints all over it, too. Basically, they took a good look at the way our Saganami-Cs and Rolands have been integrating Ghost Rider into their fire control loops, and they’ve come up with a refinement. For all intents and purposes, their suggestion is that we use Hermes buoys in conjunction with Ghost Rider. The Agamemnons have plenty of telemetry links; their links just don’t have an FTL capability. So the idea is that we strap Hermes buoys onto Ghost Rider recon drones and then tractor four or five more buoys just outside an Agamemnon’s wedge perimeter and let them talk to each other. Hermes has a lot more bandwidth—and more channels—than the standard shipboard grav com, Elizabeth. So if we pair buoys between those tractored to the ship and the ones mounted on the recon platforms then feed the telemetry links through the buoy channels and use the ones on the recon platforms to talk to the missiles…”

She raised an eyebrow as her voice trailed off. Elizabeth looked at her for several seconds, then began to nod—slowly, at first, but with increasing enthusiasm.

“Don’t get too excited,” Honor warned. “Like I say, it’s a stopgap. Neither Ghost Rider drones nor buoys are what you might call tiny, which means they’ll displace a lot of missiles. And the entire system’s on the… ramshackle side. It won’t have Keyhole’s bandwidth, even with all the buoys an Agamemnon can handle, and it won’t provide the additional missile-defense Keyhole’s laser clusters offer, either. But it will help a lot land from the shipboard end, most of the refit will consist of software changes, so we should be able to put it into service quickly."

Jonathan, I knew the correct spelling of her name is Petersen. Darnit, I KNEW it! But I'd just read a passage from my digital copy, and it has the inconsistency which made me question my better judgement . . .

We’re talking about responsibility and decency.” She squared her shoulders, meeting his gaze levelly. “Another Manticoran captain had to make this decision at a place called Grayson, Mister President. She made the same one Admiral Kotouč made, and for the same reason. You trusted us. Your people trusted us. And even if that weren’t the case, Mister President, I can’t go home and tell my Empress I stood by, watching an act of mass murder, and did nothing.” She shook her head. “The Star Empire’s honor—her honor—won’t let me do that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few things to do. Peterson, clear.”

Still, it's no excuse. I knew better. But I ain't walking no plank.

Theemile wrote:Also, The squadron was not control link limited - it was fire rate limited.

There it is! This gorilla's missing link! Thanksamillion!

Thanks for the link to the food in the Pearls Jonathan! I'm gorging on it! Considering this little morsel, how do SLN warships point defense clusters even work since their fire control computers and CMs can't handle the RMN's missile salvos themselves?

The same fire control computers which feed through the control links to the counter-missiles also drive the point defense clusters. They are fed by completely separate active sensor nets which are dedicated to defensive use and configured specifically to take over from the long-range tracking sensors once the incoming missiles enter their engagement ranges (think of them as the illuminating radars from wet-navy warships, not so much in terms of what they do, but in terms of their dedication within the specifically defensive regimen).

From chapter 59 of Torch of Freedom:

Luiz Rozsak's ninth salvo rumbled down on the PNE, and this time, there'd been time for Charlie-Zulu-Omega to be implemented.
Rozsak was wrong, in at least one respect; he wasn't the first tactician to come up with the same idea. Admiral Shannon Foraker had beaten him to it, although Rozsak could certainly be excused for being unaware of the fact.
He had three times as many missiles as he had control links, even with his surviving destroyers tied in. Given the toughness of their targets, and the defensive capability the enemy still possessed, sixty-missile salvos weren't going to be enough. Especially not when the missiles already in the pipeline were all he was going to get. Which was why Marksman was no longer controlling sixty missiles; she was controlling a hundred and eighty, and her wounded sisters, Ranger and Sharpshooter, were controlling another hundred and eighty.
The only way they could do it was by rotating each of their available command links through three separate missiles, and the degree of control they could exercise was significantly diminished. But "diminished" control was enormously better than no control at all.

I believe the fight by Rozsak was just one place in the books where one ship fires pods that are then controlled by other ships.

PS. You should divide by 9, not 8, for Apollo missiles; since the there are the 8 laser head missiles and the one control missile that communicates with the ship in each pod, for a total of 9.

tlb wrote:From chapter 59 of Torch of Freedom:

Luiz Rozsak's ninth salvo rumbled down on the PNE, and this time, there'd been time for Charlie-Zulu-Omega to be implemented.
Rozsak was wrong, in at least one respect; he wasn't the first tactician to come up with the same idea. Admiral Shannon Foraker had beaten him to it, although Rozsak could certainly be excused for being unaware of the fact.
He had three times as many missiles as he had control links, even with his surviving destroyers tied in. Given the toughness of their targets, and the defensive capability the enemy still possessed, sixty-missile salvos weren't going to be enough. Especially not when the missiles already in the pipeline were all he was going to get. Which was why Marksman was no longer controlling sixty missiles; she was controlling a hundred and eighty, and her wounded sisters, Ranger and Sharpshooter, were controlling another hundred and eighty.
The only way they could do it was by rotating each of their available command links through three separate missiles, and the degree of control they could exercise was significantly diminished. But "diminished" control was enormously better than no control at all.

I believe the fight by Rozsak was just one place in the books where one ship fires pods that are then controlled by other ships.

PS. You should divide by 9, not 8, for Apollo missiles; since the there are the 8 laser head missiles and the one control missile that communicates with the ship in each pod, for a total of 9.

Thanks for the math correction, tlb. Someone else corrected me in the "Battle of Spindle" thread where I, we, examined the hidden talents of the Mark 23E. I keep forgetting to carry the 1.

cthia wrote:
Jonathan, I knew the correct spelling of her name is Petersen. Darnit, I KNEW it! But I'd just read a passage from my digital copy, and it has the inconsistency which made me question my better judgement . . .

We’re talking about responsibility and decency.” She squared her shoulders, meeting his gaze levelly. “Another Manticoran captain had to make this decision at a place called Grayson, Mister President. She made the same one Admiral Kotouč made, and for the same reason. You trusted us. Your people trusted us. And even if that weren’t the case, Mister President, I can’t go home and tell my Empress I stood by, watching an act of mass murder, and did nothing.” She shook her head. “The Star Empire’s honor—her honor—won’t let me do that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few things to do. Peterson, clear.”

Still, it's no excuse. I knew better. But I ain't walking no plank.

Weird. I mentioned the spelling only because I'd tried to look her up in my ebook (.rft) copy as "Peterson" and found zero hits. So I had to figure out the correct spelling to find her.

And I just went back and verified that both the .rft copy and the .mobi copy on my Kindle have the correct Petersen spelling in that excerpt.

Ah well, not worth worrying over.

cthia wrote:Thanks for the link to the food in the Pearls Jonathan! I'm gorging on it! Considering this little morsel, how do SLN warships point defense clusters even work since their fire control computers and CMs can't handle the RMN's missile salvos themselves?

The same fire control computers which feed through the control links to the counter-missiles also drive the point defense clusters. They are fed by completely separate active sensor nets which are dedicated to defensive use and configured specifically to take over from the long-range tracking sensors once the incoming missiles enter their engagement ranges (think of them as the illuminating radars from wet-navy warships, not so much in terms of what they do, but in terms of their dedication within the specifically defensive regimen).

I suspect they work quite poorly.

cthia wrote:Several thousand missiles died along with Nike, according to Theemile. That doesn't rub any of you the wrong way? Brrr! Someone please get that damn Cat off the blackboard!

I'd certainly prefer her to have survived long enough to fire off more of her missiles. But it's a rare thing for a warship, any warship in any period of history, to shoot itself dry before dying.
About the only ones I can think of that may have were the WWI Royal Navy ships covering the evacuation of Crete that even if they didn't literally run out of AA ammo ran low enough that their AA became ineffective before succumbing to air attack. (And at that they presumably still had anti-surface rounds) But by staying on station they helped ensure the successful extraction of a lot of British troops that would have been captured or killed if the naval force had withdrawn for resupply. Admiral Cunningham had decided (and rightly IMHO) that the evacuation was more important that the survival of the ships. Leading to his famous quote, in response to the Army suggesting that he withdraw the ships to save them and abandon the troops: "it takes the Navy three years to build a new ship … it will take 300 years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue."


In general warships try to carry enough ammo for prolonged fighting; or a number of engagements without resupply. But warships that are sunk/destroyed tend to be ones that were fairly quickly overwhelmed; and so didn't have the time to use up all their ammunition. (Because if its a slow battering they can often withdraw before being destroyed) And since BC are deep raiders they probably carry proportionately more missiles than almost any other design; so would have the hardest time exhausting their ammunition before being overwhelmed.

So I wasn't really surprised that the ships at Hypatia died with unfired missiles aboard.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Several thousand missiles died along with Nike, according to Theemile. That doesn't rub any of you the wrong way? Brrr! Someone please get that damn Cat off the blackboard!

I'd certainly prefer her to have survived long enough to fire off more of her missiles. But it's a rare thing for a warship, any warship in any period of history, to shoot itself dry before dying.
About the only ones I can think of that may have were the WWI Royal Navy ships covering the evacuation of Crete that even if they didn't literally run out of AA ammo ran low enough that their AA became ineffective before succumbing to air attack. (And at that they presumably still had anti-surface rounds) But by staying on station they helped ensure the successful extraction of a lot of British troops that would have been captured or killed if the naval force had withdrawn for resupply. Admiral Cunningham had decided (and rightly IMHO) that the evacuation was more important that the survival of the ships. Leading to his famous quote, in response to the Army suggesting that he withdraw the ships to save them and abandon the troops: "it takes the Navy three years to build a new ship … it will take 300 years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue."


In general warships try to carry enough ammo for prolonged fighting; or a number of engagements without resupply. But warships that are sunk/destroyed tend to be ones that were fairly quickly overwhelmed; and so didn't have the time to use up all their ammunition. (Because if its a slow battering they can often withdraw before being destroyed) And since BC are deep raiders they probably carry proportionately more missiles than almost any other design; so would have the hardest time exhausting their ammunition before being overwhelmed.

So I wasn't really surprised that the ships at Hypatia died with unfired missiles aboard.

Doesn't quite fit the bill, but worth a mention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tordenskjold

Both ships were badly damaged after around 14 hours of fighting, when Wessel was running out of ammunition. He then sent an envoy to the English ship, cordially thanking the English for a good duel, and asked if he could borrow some of their ammunition in order to continue the fight. His request was denied, and the captains drank to each other's health, before the ships dispersed.

“Good hits, Sir!” Captain Clarke reported as the numbers came up on his display. Commander Ilkova was too busy for reports at the moment. “Looks like we took out all five alpha targets!”

“Good!” Kotouč acknowledged, but his eyes were on Ilkova and the master plot. That massive Solarian salvo was only ninety seconds out, and he had few illusions about what was going to happen when it arrived. Nor was he alone in that. He could see it in the tight shoulders, the masklike faces of his flag bridge personnel. Even Clarke’s, despite his obvious satisfaction.

Only Ilkova seemed oblivious to it as her hands flew across her console. The range was forty light-seconds, but the Ghost Rider platforms reduced that to less than one. She’d already cut the control links to the next three salvos in the firing queue, but there was still time for her to refine the penetration ECM and targeting of the salvos behind that. She was totally focused on just that, her blue-green eyes fiery, and Kotouč glanced at Paul Albamonte.

The EWO was just as focused as Ilkova, but not on offense. The ops officer had assumed direct control of the attack birds’ penetration EW so that Lieutenant Albamonte could concentrate on the squadron’s defensive ECM. Just as the Ghost Rider platforms gave Ilkova a direct, real-time view of her targets, they gave Albamonte a real-time view of the incoming missiles. There was less he could do with it, but he wasn’t sitting on his hands, and Kotouč checked a secondary plot just as the Loreleis came to life upon it.

Try as I may, I can't figure out the logic here. Why cut the links of the next three salvos coming up next? In favor of adjusting the ones behind it? Why not adjust the three already ready to fire? Am I digesting this wrongly?

cthia wrote:Try as I may, I can't figure out the logic here. Why cut the links of the next three salvos coming up next? In favor of adjusting the ones behind it? Why not adjust the three already ready to fire? Am I digesting this wrongly?

You direct your efforts to the missiles that will get the most benefit from shipboard guidance. Cut the links of the missiles that have good enough data to engage on their own, direct your efforts to the missiles that need a bit more help.