Attacking Darius:

kzt wrote:You mean if you are inside the beam of a cruiser scale graser? Because that’s the only signal that doesn’t follow inverse square law. Is that what you are saying?

The beam itself won't follow an inverse square law because it's a laser. And if you're in its path, you're not telling a story.

But all of its effects and side-effects around it will. I can think of at least three things to measure that don't require being within hair-width distance of a graser beam. First and most obvious is the energy transferred to the target. Manticore knew exactly the composition of its space stations, so it's reasonable to calculate how much energy is required to produce the explosions that were observed. The energy dispersal is also correlated with the amount of energy delivered per unit of time and area on target, so scans of the target prior to saturation of the sensors should give you some idea too.

Second, the space dust and solar wind excited by the passage of the beam. The Interplanetary medium is not a vacuum and at the energy levels of the gamma-ray beam, it will cause space to glow like a laser pointer on cigarette smoke, just maybe not on visible light spectrum. The beam is not perfect either (it would have infinite range if it were), so detectors downrange of but not in the path of the beam will detect leakage. Especially if the beam itself was occluded by the space station.

Third, the torpedo's own self-immolation. This is especially interesting, because the RMN has very good data (probably the best data anywhere) on how missile bodies behave and what they emit when firing a laserhead. That thing is a very bright source. And because the torpedo must be very efficient but not perfect, that means most of its energy went into the beam, but some of it leaked out in all other directions. And because the RMN has extensive expertise on grasers, they can compare their data with these torpedoes and make lots of inferences. Moreover, they can do the same to the Galton graserheads, for which they'll have far more data on including some actual specs and samples, which will allow them to conclude those aren't the same and, hopefully, were less advanced/powerful than what attacked during OB.

At a minimum, we know the GTs were 3-second grasers, while the Galton ones weren't. The time a laser is firing is very easy to tell. And I think this is likely the single greatest contributor to energy. I could give you that telling the power of the laser is difficult because of saturation, but energy is power multiplied by time. Since you have the value of time with very good accuracy and you have a lower bound number for power because that's the threshold of saturation, you have the lower bound of energy.

cthia wrote:That is true. It is essentially what Hamish assured Beth when Beth enquired about the state of the war on two fronts? But as I recall, Hamish added a qualifier. Paraphrasing, "I assure you Elizabeth, we can handle anything the Mandarins send at us, until we run out of missiles." Am I mistaken about that?

What he said, in Mission of Honor -- so in the immediate aftermath of Oyster Bay -- specifically 3 days after OB -- and before he had any reports on MDM combat against League SDs (so before the Admiralty realized they took fewer missiles to kill than a RHN BC) was

Mission of Honor wrote:Given the fact that our tactical advantages are so hugely bound up with our missile superiority, and given the numbers of missiles required to destroy or mission-kill even a Solarian ship-of-the-wall, that means our ability to take the war to the League has just evaporated. In fact, while it’s likely we have enough Apollos already in inventory to finish off the Republic if it comes to that, doing so would leave us with essentially none for use against the League for almost an entire T-year.

And this was the hottest of hot wash takes on their position, while they were still busy inventorying what was left and working out how long it might take to get their production lines back online.

So like I've said in a few previous posts, White Haven believed they might lack the missiles to take on the League after defeating Haven.

But they didn't have to defeat Haven, that war was ended without another shot being fired between them.

And it turns out that combat showed the Solarian ships-of-the-wall were far weaker targets than White Haven was likely assuming here. But because the first combat against them, at the Battle of Spindle, happened nearly contemporaneously with Oyster Bay he didn't have that info yet.
(They were both Feb 1922. I think Spindle was slightly earlier, but not enough so where the Admiralty would have received the after action reports yet. So they didn't realize cruisers will Apollo pods were able to so decisively curb stomp SLN SD).
Without those after action reports White Haven would have to err on the safe side and assume the SLN SDs had effective defenses; despite their smaller size, he'd probably based his assessment around them having defenses equal to a ceasefire era Gryphon.

And it turns out that that would have been too generous by a long shot. A Gryphon of that era, so no Mk30 or Mk31 extended range CMs, is still several times better defended against MDMs than a SLN SD.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:At a minimum, we know the GTs were 3-second grasers, while the Galton ones weren't. The time a laser is firing is very easy to tell. And I think this is likely the single greatest contributor to energy. I could give you that telling the power of the laser is difficult because of saturation, but energy is power multiplied by time. Since you have the value of time with very good accuracy and you have a lower bound number for power because that's the threshold of saturation, you have the lower bound of energy.

Is that right? Without checking, I thought that the length of fire was the same but the physical size was less to make the graser fit on the missile.
At the bottom of page 652 in the hard-copy it says:

Galton's R&D had engineered the original graserhead down into something that it could cram into an outsized conventional missile just small enough to fit into a Hasta III pod. It wasn't as powerful as the graser torpedoes which had savaged Manticore's industrial infrastructuture in the Yawata Strike, but it was more destructive than any X-ray laser, because its duration was measured in seconds, not milliseconds.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:In a race to build more, the Alliance would win. The Alliance had to only create a new missile production line. Even if Beowulf and Haven hadn't come in to help, there were still the Andermani who could have begun their own production of Apollo, so that's something that would be solved in within maybe a year. The SLN, on the other hand, had to R&D a complete SD(P) (a six-year job) and a workable MDM with range comparable to the Mk23, from scratch. The original, pre-Eric timeline, did give the SLN time to do exactly that.

And Apollo wasn't needed for the SLN. The Mk23 that had been in production since Operation Buttercup would have been more than enough against the SLN. So, like you said, they could have raided the forts' caches and replaced those with Mk42 4DM (which was likely the plan anyway, so likely ongoing).

Couple things. Buttercup didn't use Mk23s -- those were the later, smaller, micro-fusion powered MDMs. During Buttercup "all" the RMN had were there original bulkier capacitor powered MDM (which were probably the ones we met later as Mk41 capacitor powered MDM).

But that quibble aside, even if the Andies ran into trouble setting up Mk23 + Mk23C Apollo missile production lines don't forget that prior to joining the 2nd war alliance they'd already worked out a 2-drive capacitor powered capital ship DDM; which is what their pre-alliance SD(P)s carried.

If necessary it should be fairly simple to rig up a RMN compatible pod that holds those IAN missiles. And those existing IAN production lines wouldn't have been touched by Oyster Bay. So if the RMN started running short on missiles during a war with the League they could probably supplement their existing stocks with new-build of those IAN missiles.

(their powered range would be no better than a Mk16 or Cataphract -- but the RMN defenses are so overwhelmingly superior that, coupled with the ability to keep rolling large salvos from their pod layers, they would still have a decisive edge over SLN SDs towing cataphract pods)

Jonathan_S wrote:(They were both Feb 1922. I think Spindle was slightly earlier, but not enough so where the Admiralty would have received the after action reports yet. So they didn't realize cruisers will Apollo pods were able to so decisively curb stomp SLN SD).

Without those after action reports White Haven would have to err on the safe side and assume the SLN SDs had effective defenses; despite their smaller size, he'd probably based his assessment around them having defenses equal to a ceasefire era Gryphon.

I'm trying to find the passage of when that data does become available and how the opinions and conclusions might have changed, but I can't. I think it's the passage where White Haven talks about how RMN cruisers could defeat SLN SDs, so what would happen when they used battlecruisers.

And it turns out that that would have been too generous by a long shot. A Gryphon of that era, so no Mk30 or Mk31 extended range CMs, is still several times better defended against MDMs than a SLN SD.

The other thing is that it depended on how the SLN fought. The SLN and the Mandarins realised, by the of MoH, that using SDs was completely ineffective and just a money-sink. Those huge ships couldn't outfight GA cruisers, were poorly trained, and cost a lot to operate. That's when they decided to shift to using FF and cruisers and battlecruisers to buy time.

Another passage in MoH talks about how the FF had enough lighter ships that could harass Manticoran commerce and be more than a nuisance.

tlb wrote:It may well be that the development of Hasta by Technodyne and its demonstration to the League Navy was very well documented; but the idea it is based on has been around since the first use of Mistletoe. Therefore Galton could have had something like Hasta before Oyster Bay (we will have to see what is tn Galton's records) and leaked the design to Technodyne to jump start their development.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, it's entirely possible for the Galton Navy to independently develop the same solution. But that wasn't the case: the Galton Navy was using actual Hastas, because the Darius infiltration into Galton had to get them something fast. They didn't have time to feed bits and pieces of information so Galton would "independently develop" a solution that was noticeably different than a Hasta but based on the same idea.

Meanwhile, the graser torpedoes that did come into the MBS and Yeltsin's Star weren't Hastas (because Hastas didn't exist yet). So where is the research for those? And if those existed by late 1921, the time when the ships that took part in OB had to have launched, why did Galton have to use Hastas in 1923? Especially since the stealth in those 1921 weapons appears to be better?

The quote I found in UH (shown in my previous post) about the firing length of the graser on a missile that could fit in a Hasta III pod, would seem to indicate that pieces were already there; what was special to the defense of Galton was reducing the size of the graser to something that could fit into a specific pod. That is what became Shuttlecock and was detected by the bow wave.

Note that because it was engineered down from a bigger graser at Galton, the size difference is not a discrepancy.

tlb wrote:Note that because it was engineered down from a bigger graser at Galton, the size difference is not a discrepancy.

Those also seem to be graserheads, not laserheads. That is, those are missiles that fire gamma-ray laser beams, not the X-ray laser beams that traditional missiles and "laser" mounts fire. I hadn't realised it until TEiF, but it seems that grasers only exist aboard ships, except for the MAlign who is the only entity to have managed to miniaturise it enough for a missile or torpedo body.

So THAT points to an independent development from the SLN. And since in OB those were grasers, it would support the theory that Galton was responsible for OB.

There's a problem with that graserhead itself, because it seems to be noticeably weaker than what was used in OB and I bet the GA can tell the two apart.

But even aside from the warhead, the bigger problem is the vehicle itself. Galton was using actual Hastas and captured databases will show it was inspired by the SLN weapon, which the GA has a timeline for. And this vehicle couldn't have been used during OB or during Operation Fabius. A Hasta does not have the endurance or the stealth that the Silver Bullet needed.

Now, the MAlign will have inserted hints in those databases of what those could have been. They did, after all, have Galton produce graserheads that were shipped off in time for OB. The question is how good that job was, because those clues couldn't hint at what the spider really is, so it can contradict the sensor recordings of the three events.

tlb wrote:Note that because it was engineered down from a bigger graser at Galton, the size difference is not a discrepancy.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Those also seem to be graserheads, not laserheads. That is, those are missiles that fire gamma-ray laser beams, not the X-ray laser beams that traditional missiles and "laser" mounts fire. I hadn't realised it until TEiF, but it seems that grasers only exist aboard ships, except for the MAlign who is the only entity to have managed to miniaturise it enough for a missile or torpedo body.

So THAT points to an independent development from the SLN. And since in OB those were grasers, it would support the theory that Galton was responsible for OB.

There's a problem with that graserhead itself, because it seems to be noticeably weaker than what was used in OB and I bet the GA can tell the two apart.

But even aside from the warhead, the bigger problem is the vehicle itself. Galton was using actual Hastas and captured databases will show it was inspired by the SLN weapon, which the GA has a timeline for. And this vehicle couldn't have been used during OB or during Operation Fabius. A Hasta does not have the endurance or the stealth that the Silver Bullet needed.

Now, the MAlign will have inserted hints in those databases of what those could have been. They did, after all, have Galton produce graserheads that were shipped off in time for OB. The question is how good that job was, because those clues couldn't hint at what the spider really is, so it can contradict the sensor recordings of the three events.

Yes; "it seems to be noticeably weaker than what was used in OB", but that is because it is noticeably SMALLER than the ones used in OB and the GA will have the factual documentation to show why that occurred.

Please point to the specific text that justifies stating "Galton was using actual Hastas and captured databases will show it was inspired by the SLN weapon". The quote from the book said "Galton's R&D had engineered the original graserhead down into something that it could cram into an outsized conventional missile just small enough to fit into a Hasta III pod". The reference to Hasta here is just to the pod.

The SLN got the Hasta from Technodyne and the Malign has connections to Technodyne; so the information flow is far more likely to be from Galton to the SLN, than the reverse.

tlb wrote:Please point to the specific text that justifies stating "Galton was using actual Hastas and captured databases will show it was inspired by the SLN weapon". The quote from the book said "Galton's R&D had engineered the original graserhead down into something that it could cram into an outsized conventional missile just small enough to fit into a Hasta III pod". The reference to Hasta here is just to the pod.

Need to research that, but it would be in Gail's simulations of "System Alpha." She was the one (or one of those, if other teams independently reached the same conclusions) who suggested that System Alpha's defences use Hastas.

However, I'll grant you the similarity may be only superficial, because the Hasta is after all just a recon drone with a missile pod attached. Galton would have used their own recon drone vehicles, with their own version of stealth, not the SLN stock.

The SLN got the Hasta from Technodyne and the Malign has connections to Technodyne; so the information flow is far more likely to be from Galton to the SLN, than the reverse.

Indeed, but not in this case. In this case, we know it was a Technodyne invention, done by their Ganymede annex. We also know that Technodyne has the paperwork to prove all of its development steps in the R&D that led to the Hasta and that the GF captured this information.

The MAlign could have done no more than make suggestions to Technodyne, and fairly vague ones at that. This is markedly different from what happened to the Cataphract, which TIY refuses to cooperate in explaining just how they came about its production. TIY was handed the fully-fledged CAD/CAE blueprints to mass-produce them, and then later handed updates to those, without any R&D pointing to failed prototypes and discarded ideas.

There's also a question of timeline: we know Galton didn't begin production of Hasta-carried graserheads until about the time of the Fall of Mesa and the end of the war (it was after Houdini). The captured databases might be able to show just when they did, but if not, the simple fact that they had a limited supply of such and the sensor recordings of the production facilities before everything got blown up would be able to narrow down the timeline. So if the MAlign-at-Galton had been responsible for inspiring the Ganymede R&D, they'd have had to have a bench concept at a minimum before Ganymede made their tests, plus adding the travel time from Galton to Sol.

It's possible that Galton did independently come to a similar solution early enough that it could be used to explain influencing TIY. They were a militaristic civilisation, after all, and seems to me that researching a stealth delivery vehicle would be a no-brainer (at least in hindsight) and they did have a stealth advantage, or so they thought.

But that doesn't remove the fact that the Galton recon drone bodies couldn't have been the ones used at either the Yawata or Beowulf strikes. Someone sent multiple drones with a 3-month endurance into Beowulf and that thing wasn't detected at all.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But that doesn't remove the fact that the Galton recon drone bodies couldn't have been the ones used at either the Yawata or Beowulf strikes. Someone sent multiple drones with a 3-month endurance into Beowulf and that thing wasn't detected at all.

I completely agree with this. If the Grand Alliance has the evidence to show that nothing that Galton had was good enough to accomplish what the graser torpedoes did in the Yawata Strike or what the Silver Bullets did to destroy Mycroft at Beowulf, then they have sold evidence that Galton was not the last stronghold of the Mesan Alignment.