?

Duckk wrote:No one is launching from 1 billion miles away. That's the average distance from Earth to Saturn. That takes years to travel at merely interplanetary speeds, which makes it utterly useless as a tactical (or even strategic) weapon. And it massively increases the odds of someone detecting it long before it's a threat. And at relativistic speeds, one is inclined to ask how this weapon is launched without anyone knowing.

I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm saying it's feasible and I do think that 0.1% accuracy is more than achievable. If you can loiter out there for a long time, you will know with very good precision your relative position and velocity to the planet you're targeting and any other objects in the system. We have technology for that today, as we can keep the Hubble Space Telescope pointed to a patch of sky with very good accuracy so we don't get blurry messes of pictures. And that's in Earth orbit -- the JWST will be much further out so that emissions from Earth won't affect it. Like it, a ship a billion km away will likely have very little gravitational influence from other masses nearby and definitely no atmospheric drag. The telescopes do have active positioning, but so would the launching platform.

In fact, the planet will be helping you because they will likely have EM transmissions whose nominal frequencies you know, so you can measure the red- or blueshift and determine how fast you're moving. Not to mention that the planet is probably broadcasting a timing information. If there's a second source of timing information, you can know your position in the intersection of two spheres; a third source will give you exact position (one of two anyway). Any non-backwater system will have navigational beacons like that which should allow for very accurate, passive positioning. Call it SPS - System Positioning System.

Now, there are still errors in this. As I said above, I think the biggest will be the acceleration imparted by the launch and the drag of the local interplanetary medium. By how much, I can't tell. I also can't tell if that's acceptable or not: if you're trying to hit one house, it might be too much; if you're trying to hit a military installation with a 15-km blast radius anyway, it might be.

Kenetic Energy Wepons are just that.....something robust (or shielded) enough to penetrate an atmosphere and obliterate a target by the energy released by smashing into it.

So you launch a projectile which is little more than a very heavy/dense penetrator from "somewhere" in the system and you have two choices. One is to put some kind of propultion system on it to adjust both it's speed at atmosphere entry and provide adjustment in-flight. The other is just launch the object out a missle tube (fairly high speed anyway) and have it follow a purely BALLISTIC path to target- give or take a few challanges like atmosphearic entry - on the way.

Why didn't Mesa use a really bid KEW on the tower that was occupied by Thandy and company? Well, just perhaps the FUSION power plant located under it since you drive a penetrator into a FUSION reactor and you "just might" get a containment failure---and even if you don't get "dirty" nuclear blast, you are going to get a fairly spectacular explosion from loseing containment. Not something you usualy want to do in inside one of your own cities.

If you expect to actualy use parts of a planet after you bombard it, you probably don't want to us fission bombs on cities and stuff. Why? well, cities are usualy built at some location with an exconomic function like transportation, or really close to an major agricultural area or
something that makes them VALUABLE to have in that location. Or you could just be a terrorist and destroy for the love of destruction and inflicting harm.



[The definition of KEWs, among othrer things, which is why the expectation of why Mike's fleet deliberatly used fisionable material for ground strikes (and for the stuff out in the system) doesn't do much more than-to us the readers- reenforce the apparent lack of normal definition of morals of the Alignment. So, just how important was it for the Alignmente to set off these huge nuclear explosing under their hidden bases and make sure that both those locations and a great deal of territory right around them and down wind were going to be massivley dangerous from radiation for years? Next you will hear saying "They made us do it"?]

Duckk wrote:No one is launching from 1 billion miles away. That's the average distance from Earth to Saturn. That takes years to travel at merely interplanetary speeds, which makes it utterly useless as a tactical (or even strategic) weapon. And it massively increases the odds of someone detecting it long before it's a threat. And at relativistic speeds, one is inclined to ask how this weapon is launched without anyone knowing.

I'm not so sure about that.

The fact that it takes years for impact, may be the silver lining and a built-in windfall. Talk about plausible deniability.

But! If a planet can be targeted from that far away in a ballistic attack, EEVs could be pulled off with reckless abandon.

I doubt that very dense projectiles the size of 5-lb barbells coming in on random vectors is going to be detected. Especially if launched on several varying vectors. Didn't the MA already prove that? That goes double in poorer systems.

At any rate, kinda hard to incriminate someone who fled the scene of the crime five years before it even happened. "Who, us?"

cthia wrote:I'm not so sure about that.

The fact that it takes years for impact, may be the silver lining and a built-in windfall. Talk about plausible deniability.

Duckk's point is still valid: if something is travelling slow enough that it spends a month or more in the inner system, then it's likely it will be detected. We have the technology to do that today and we have mapped all Near Earth objects 1km or bigger, which if impacted would cause major destruction on a global scale, but not render the planet uninhabitable or rise to E.L.E. (extinction level event). And that's with passive, mostly ground-based telescopes.

A space-based economy that can actually go check out if a blip is a real rock or not is not going to be caught unawares. Not because they're expecting an EEV strike, but simply as a matter of routine. Scanning for rocks should be done in any system, continuously. Especially for those with high ship traffic, like the MBS.

But! If a planet can be targeted from that far away in a ballistic attack, EEVs could be pulled off with reckless abandon.

I doubt that very dense projectiles the size of 5-lb barbells coming in on random vectors is going to be detected. Especially if launched on several varying vectors. Didn't the MA already prove that? That goes double in poorer systems.

At any rate, kinda hard to incriminate someone who fled the scene of the crime five years before it even happened. "Who, us?"

No, those are too small. But those don't survive atmospheric entry and won't hit anything on the ground.

You need something at least 100 m wide (thus massing a million tonnes) to hit the ground, if it's a pure rock. Specially-made projectiles could be less massive, and if launched at a higher velocity than pure interplanetary speeds they will also need less mass. That's why I said that spending more than a month in the inner system will get you caught: the KEW will be too big to hide and will be seen by asteroid-detection surveillance.

No, a long-range KEW attack has to accelerate something to a high fraction of c. The high velocity also improves accuracy by minimising the effect of errors in positioning, though the error in the velocity itself is itself magnified.

BTW, a rock can also be steered, by flashing lasers on its backside and making it evaporate geysers of ice. The launching ship can do laser-ranging to figure out the speed it imparted on the object and correct the course. Also, the rock doesn't need to be launched from a tube. The ship can simply accelerate to the velocity vector the rock needs to be in and the ship can finely correct that vector. Once it is as perfect as it can be, it detaches from the rock and flies away.

If your going to start launching missiles from outside the system to hit a planet, you are going to probably want to start out beyond the local detection capability of impeller drives (unless you are the Alignment and then you can be a lot closer)

So what does a 100 ton missile pushed up to .6C and comming in ballistic -except for some small adjustmet control for corrections and whatever can be switched on at the last moment before atmospheic entry- do to a planet?

And if you scale that up to a surplus SLN destroyer doing the same thing? A planet may be small in terms of a star system but you know when and where it's going to be as planets tend to have stable (long term) orbits and it's really really had to move the planet to avoid an incomming object. So you do set the DD on autopilot and in stealth just before the minimal crew bails out and boards a companion ship which then starts to vector away before going into hyper space. Some time later there is probably a very short period of panic and then a very large and disastrous impact by the ship on the target planet. Exactly where on the planet, at that speed, is probably not critical. Heck, if your off 1/4 planit diameter and instead of hitting on the equator you smack into it half way to a pole, you might even have a chance of messing with it's axial stability and screw things up even more.

But if your the Alighment, who cares? If there are any survivors, you can eventualy go back (using special designed and grown "work crew") to collect specimens and see if the rather formidable darwinian action has provided any interesting evolution of the remnant population decendents.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Finally, back to the dirty bombs, the issue with them is that they have no other purpose than to be dirty bombs. It's not like you're using a boom mode missile as a dirty bomb. That imposes logistic problems in their use: first, someone must manufacture such bombs and they must either do it in secret or they must justify their existence, somehow. Second, you must carry them to target, which is volume and mass that wasn't available to other munitions and you don't want to fight yourself dry before reaching the target. Third, there's the delivery: if most planetary bombardment is done by way of KEW, you may not have the proper way of firing a bomb. You may need to toss it out of the shuttle bay and let it ignite rockets to go down to the planet (that may mean the bomb is less precise, but in this case that's not really a drawback).

I'm tactfully trying to throw out the caution flag on that one. We cannot be presumptuous towards another navy's goals. TO BE—dirty bombs—may not be the question, but the answer. They MAY turn out to be JUST what the doctor ORDERED. Like, well, moon bases that you never again want to be habitable. Or like when finding out the whereabouts of that godforsaken ruthless species like the MA when happening upon their system. IOW, I don't think we should discount a "niche" market.

As far as firing them, I would think they would be designed to be tube launched. We seem to agree the Honorverse will have a huge impact on our understanding of the design of dirty bombs. I don't think a design that will allow them to be tube launched will be a problem. And I don't think finding a manufacturer will be a big deal. The interest of science still exists. There may actually be a need for these type of weapons in the HV that escapes us. If used for science, then they aren't exclusively weapons.

I think the HV would be able to significantly decrease the required volume of such devices. "Fat Man" can go on a diet.

Why would it ever be any different, strategically, than when the US dirty bombed Japan? Under the same strategic situation of course. Regardless that it was the best we could do at the time. At any rate, the strategical and tactical considerations of succeeding in deploying dirty bombs against Japan may have existed early on in the HV regarding EEVs.

I am skeptical about the ability to target something as far away as some of the posited claims with a completely ballistic attack. It has already been touched on a few times, but consider the mechanics of properly shooting a rifle. Breathing techniques must be used to hit the target, as well as a slow as molasses squeeze of the trigger. Jerking the trigger while squeezing it can significantly throw off the bullet. As does breathing while pulling the trigger.

It should be the same for a warship. The firing mechanism itself could throw the projectile off quite a bit downrange. An arc second is far to much to cause a miss on a planet at those ranges. If a ship lurches when firing, that won't cut it. And, the actual targeting mechanism has to be state of the art. Cross hairs ain't gonna work from the ranges discussed. And every decimal place in those type of calculations has to be perfect. Which is why I imagine a behemoth of a computer will be needed to crunch the numbers, like the one I imagine the MA will develop. And a bit of time to "align" for success. Pardon the pun.

At any rate, I imagine there are many planets in the HV that are used for target practice.

P.S.

I am assuming the mass requirements you posited upstream of a projectile to hit the ground fits the capabilities of present day Earth's tech. I'm positing metals, materials, and processes that will enable a 5-lb projectile to hit paydirt. In conjunction with heat tiles that don't fall off? LOL

cthia wrote:As far as firing them, I would think they would be designed to be tube launched. We seem to agree the Honorverse will have a huge impact on our understanding of the design of dirty bombs. I don't think a design that will allow them to be tube launched will be a problem. And I don't think finding a manufacturer will be a big deal. The interest of science still exists. There may actually be a need for these type of weapons in the HV that escapes us. If used for science, then they aren't exclusively weapons.

I think the HV would be able to significantly decrease the required volume of such devices. "Fat Man" can go on a diet.

Why would it ever be any different, strategically, than when the US dirty bombed Japan? Under the same strategic situation of course. Regardless that it was the best we could do at the time. At any rate, the strategical and tactical considerations of succeeding in deploying dirty bombs against Japan may have existed early on in the HV regarding EEVs.

I am skeptical about the ability to target something as far away as some of the posited claims with a completely ballistic attack. It has already been touched on a few times, but consider the mechanics of properly shooting a rifle. Breathing techniques must be used to hit the target, as well as a slow as molasses squeeze of the trigger. Jerking the trigger while squeezing it can significantly throw off the bullet. As does breathing while pulling the trigger.

It should be the same for a warship. The firing mechanism itself could throw the projectile off quite a bit downrange. An arc second is far to much to cause a miss on a planet at those ranges. If a ship lurches when firing, that won't cut it. And, the actual targeting mechanism has to be state of the art. Cross hairs ain't gonna work from the ranges discussed. And every decimal place in those type of calculations has to be perfect. Which is why I imagine a behemoth of a computer will be needed to crunch the numbers, like the one I imagine the MA will develop. And a bit of time to "align" for success. Pardon the pun.

At any rate, I imagine there are many planets in the HV that are used for target practice.

P.S.

I am assuming the mass requirements you posited upstream of a projectile to hit the ground fits the capabilities of present day Earth's tech. I'm positing metals, materials, and processes that will enable a 5-lb projectile to hit paydirt. In conjunction with heat tiles that don't fall off? LOL

??? Fat Man (and Little Boy) weren't dirty bombs. They actually left relatively little nuclear fallout - that's why Nagasaki (and Hiroshima) weren't rendered uninhabitable. Even the day after each was nuked it were far less radioactive than the area around Fukushima power plant is today.

A good dirty bomb would basically be backing a warhead with the extracted fuel rods of a fission plant - lots of nasty decay chains happening with lethal levels of radioactivity. It's all radiation and nuclear boom - just enough conventional explosive to disperse the radioactive material and make it hard to clean up. (And I can think of no scientific reason for needing to bombard an area with lots of highly radioactive waste)

Also it isn't the number crunching that's hard for a long range ballistic hit - you don't need a supercomputer. Instead you'd already alluded to the actual problem - it's slop or non-measurable variables in the system - like the breathing or trigger pull in your rifle example; but extended to things like varying wind conditions after you pull the trigger.

It's relatively trivial to calculate the speed and angle needed to make a hit - but all the supercomputing power in the universe can't correct for, say, an unexpected change in the solar wind after release or a ship passing unexpectedly close enough to slightly perturb the projectile post-release (you also have issues with any slop or vibration in the launch/release system causing the KEW to not quite hit the calculated necessary vector. That's one reason current deep space probes have mid-course adjustments - it's not because NASA and the other space agencies can't calculate the exact path the probe needs to follow when all conditions are known - it's because a) all conditions aren't, and can't be, known and b) physical systems have some inherent level of variability in them meaning except by purest luck you can completely perfectly achieve the calculated vectors - and over that time of flight even miniscule deviations add up to major misses.

So you checked your position against the calculated perfect position as you fly along and based on how far you're off you calculate the necessary adjustments to make with your thrusters. (And because those adjustments can't be trusted to provide perfectly exactly the vector correction calculated you do that check and when necessary adjust, many times over the course of the flight. A KEW on a multi-month trajectory would, IMHO, need to do the same - regardless of how big a computer did the pre-launch calculations.

There is no point in using a nuclear weapon to bombard a planet, as a KEW will have more energy anyway. If for some unfathomable reason you want to seed the planet with radioactivity, a fission bomb is a pin prick compared to using spent fuel rods or nuclear waste.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:As far as firing them, I would think they would be designed to be tube launched. We seem to agree the Honorverse will have a huge impact on our understanding of the design of dirty bombs. I don't think a design that will allow them to be tube launched will be a problem. And I don't think finding a manufacturer will be a big deal. The interest of science still exists. There may actually be a need for these type of weapons in the HV that escapes us. If used for science, then they aren't exclusively weapons.

I think the HV would be able to significantly decrease the required volume of such devices. "Fat Man" can go on a diet.

Why would it ever be any different, strategically, than when the US dirty bombed Japan? Under the same strategic situation of course. Regardless that it was the best we could do at the time. At any rate, the strategical and tactical considerations of succeeding in deploying dirty bombs against Japan may have existed early on in the HV regarding EEVs.

I am skeptical about the ability to target something as far away as some of the posited claims with a completely ballistic attack. It has already been touched on a few times, but consider the mechanics of properly shooting a rifle. Breathing techniques must be used to hit the target, as well as a slow as molasses squeeze of the trigger. Jerking the trigger while squeezing it can significantly throw off the bullet. As does breathing while pulling the trigger.

It should be the same for a warship. The firing mechanism itself could throw the projectile off quite a bit downrange. An arc second is far to much to cause a miss on a planet at those ranges. If a ship lurches when firing, that won't cut it. And, the actual targeting mechanism has to be state of the art. Cross hairs ain't gonna work from the ranges discussed. And every decimal place in those type of calculations has to be perfect. Which is why I imagine a behemoth of a computer will be needed to crunch the numbers, like the one I imagine the MA will develop. And a bit of time to "align" for success. Pardon the pun.

At any rate, I imagine there are many planets in the HV that are used for target practice.

P.S.

I am assuming the mass requirements you posited upstream of a projectile to hit the ground fits the capabilities of present day Earth's tech. I'm positing metals, materials, and processes that will enable a 5-lb projectile to hit paydirt. In conjunction with heat tiles that don't fall off? LOL

??? Fat Man (and Little Boy) weren't dirty bombs. They actually left relatively little nuclear fallout - that's why Nagasaki (and Hiroshima) weren't rendered uninhabitable. Even the day after each was nuked it were far less radioactive than the area around Fukushima power plant is today.

A good dirty bomb would basically be backing a warhead with the extracted fuel rods of a fission plant - lots of nasty decay chains happening with lethal levels of radioactivity. It's all radiation and nuclear boom - just enough conventional explosive to disperse the radioactive material and make it hard to clean up. (And I can think of no scientific reason for needing to bombard an area with lots of highly radioactive waste)

Also it isn't the number crunching that's hard for a long range ballistic hit - you don't need a supercomputer. Instead you'd already alluded to the actual problem - it's slop or non-measurable variables in the system - like the breathing or trigger pull in your rifle example; but extended to things like varying wind conditions after you pull the trigger.

It's relatively trivial to calculate the speed and angle needed to make a hit - but all the supercomputing power in the universe can't correct for, say, an unexpected change in the solar wind after release or a ship passing unexpectedly close enough to slightly perturb the projectile post-release (you also have issues with any slop or vibration in the launch/release system causing the KEW to not quite hit the calculated necessary vector. That's one reason current deep space probes have mid-course adjustments - it's not because NASA and the other space agencies can't calculate the exact path the probe needs to follow when all conditions are known - it's because a) all conditions aren't, and can't be, known and b) physical systems have some inherent level of variability in them meaning except by purest luck you can completely perfectly achieve the calculated vectors - and over that time of flight even miniscule deviations add up to major misses.

So you checked your position against the calculated perfect position as you fly along and based on how far you're off you calculate the necessary adjustments to make with your thrusters. (And because those adjustments can't be trusted to provide perfectly exactly the vector correction calculated you do that check and when necessary adjust, many times over the course of the flight. A KEW on a multi-month trajectory would, IMHO, need to do the same - regardless of how big a computer did the pre-launch calculations.

I don't think I made my points clear. First, I can't believe that in the HV spent fuel rods would be necessary if a modern dirty bomb is the objective. Simply dispersing radioactive material, made radioactive by being inserted into an active reactor for the sole purpose of dirty bomb production will do. These could be pellets or whatever. In effect, a dirty shrapnel or fragmentation bomb. In the HV these kinds of weapons can be made modern. With uninhabited moons made available for R&D, much is possible. Futuristic tech makes lots of things possible.

Because of the effect of futuristic tech, I was positing that even "Fat Man" could be made much smaller with the same yield. That remark was simply icing.

And of course modern man can't think of scientific ways to use dirty bombs, why would we give it any thought with the danger it represents to us. And the logistics headache of disposing of radioactive material. In a space based civilization, all of the current dangers to man (as a whole) is pretty much gone. We are free to seek scientific interests in the area. Oftentimes, scientific interests finds us.

But my point is that modern dirty bombs may be a perfect way of rendering an area uninhabitable, thus unusable. And it is a perfect way to accomplish it if there is a limited probability of actually succeeding in putting MORE than a single hit dead on planet. Like in Masada's case.


****** *

Jonathan_S wrote:Also it isn't the number crunching that's hard for a long range ballistic hit - you don't need a supercomputer.

I am not so certain about that Jonathan. But I'll circle back around to that point. Or end up there.

At any rate, I was actually proposing the use of a supercomputer not just to hit the planet, but to hit specific targets on the planet; like Mount Royal Palace. Although I was proposing much shorter launch points.

Jonathan_S wrote:Instead you'd already alluded to the actual problem - it's slop or non-measurable variables in the system - like the breathing or trigger pull in your rifle example; but extended to things like varying wind conditions after you pull the trigger.

It's relatively trivial to calculate the speed and angle needed to make a hit

Agreed. IF all of the variables are known to the precision needed it would be child's play. But all of the variables in the resolution needed wouldn't be known. In the HV only relative or general positions are known, for the most part. But in no way are iron-clad spatial positions to the degree of being usable in equations for ballistic strikes on a planet available from every possible position in the vastness of space. You would need to know the EXACT location of the planet at any time index to a significant number of decimal places from all known points in space. And these points in space need to be calculated to the EXACT number of decimal points. There is too much variation in the HV. But then, HV weapons are corrected in flight. Or after they come back online after the ballistic phase.

Jonathan_S wrote:- but all the supercomputing power in the universe can't correct for, say, an unexpected change in the solar wind after release or a ship passing unexpectedly close enough to slightly perturb the projectile post-release

Which is why I proposed the MA will dramatically eliminate the problem by getting much closer in for the shot. Just to ruffle ThinksMarkedly's feathers, the MA will be launching from a position close enough that some pervert will be looking down Beth's blouse. LOL

Jonathan_S wrote: (you also have issues with any slop or vibration in the launch/release system causing the KEW to not quite hit the calculated necessary vector.

Yep, akin to the aforementioned jerk of the trigger. I would think the MA would engineer a system that would solve that problem. Necessity is the mother of invention. A ship incorporating a huge stabilizing gyroscope might be possible. And, launching from such a large ship won't hurt.

Jonathan_S wrote:That's one reason current deep space probes have mid-course adjustments - it's not because NASA and the other space agencies can't calculate the exact path the probe needs to follow when all conditions are known - it's because a) all conditions aren't, and can't be, known and b) physical systems have some inherent level of variability in them meaning except by purest luck you can completely perfectly achieve the calculated vectors - and over that time of flight even miniscule deviations add up to major misses.

Certainly true with current tech, computers and data.

Jonathan_S wrote:So you checked your position against the calculated perfect position as you fly along and based on how far you're off you calculate the necessary adjustments to make with your thrusters. (And because those adjustments can't be trusted to provide perfectly exactly the vector correction calculated you do that check and when necessary adjust, many times over the course of the flight. A KEW on a multi-month trajectory would, IMHO, need to do the same - regardless of how big a computer did the pre-launch calculations.

I would think the ship itself would have to employ some sort of device to measure the exact position of the planet relative to itself to a significant number of decimal points from whatever point in space. Then the ship needs to be properly oriented towards the target. I think you are underestimating the difficulty of hitting even a huge planet from such enormous proposed distances using the relative positions known - even in the absence of solar winds and debris - in a totally ballistic strike.

P.S.
Rereading that post I agree it was too rushed and too assuming. If the US had used actual dirty bombs against Japan, I think the devastation and fallout would have affected us even more, in the long run.

Assuming, of course, that we actually COULD have produced a bonafide dirty bomb with our limited understanding of the technology - paired with our limited production techniques - at the time.

.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm not so sure about that.

The fact that it takes years for impact, may be the silver lining and a built-in windfall. Talk about plausible deniability.

Duckk's point is still valid: if something is travelling slow enough that it spends a month or more in the inner system, then it's likely it will be detected. We have the technology to do that today and we have mapped all Near Earth objects 1km or bigger, which if impacted would cause major destruction on a global scale, but not render the planet uninhabitable or rise to E.L.E. (extinction level event). And that's with passive, mostly ground-based telescopes.

I disagree with likely, but I WILL agree it increases the odds of detection. We, here in the Sol system, have also been completely oblivious to near misses until after the fact.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:A space-based economy that can actually go check out if a blip is a real rock or not is not going to be caught unawares. Not because they're expecting an EEV strike, but simply as a matter of routine. Scanning for rocks should be done in any system, continuously. Especially for those with high ship traffic, like the MBS.

The "Ya - Whatta Strike!" Begs to differ. But your mistake is when applying your notion to the real world. Scanning is accomplished with the limitations of technology. A full scan of the entire heavens is not possible as a matter of recourse. It is accomplished over time. Instruments have to be directed towards certain locations for a certain period of time. And, they have to be effected by humans with their human foibles, such as boredom and a lack of attention span. All the while not expecting something to be coming in on a completely random vector. Factoring in any other inherent limitations of the scanning system.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, a rock can also be steered, by flashing lasers on its backside and making it evaporate geysers of ice. The launching ship can do laser-ranging to figure out the speed it imparted on the object and correct the course. Also, the rock doesn't need to be launched from a tube. The ship can simply accelerate to the velocity vector the rock needs to be in and the ship can finely correct that vector. Once it is as perfect as it can be, it detaches from the rock and flies away.

True, but contrails may increase detection.

The difficulty of pulling off the maneuver you just suggested is inherent in the problem I was alluding to upstream, while simultaneously fighting off the enemy. Again, wasn't that partly responsible for Masada's failure? I definitely need a reread of that.