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tlb
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 4440
Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:34 am
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Jonathan_S wrote:Nothing in there that sounds like computer predictions; much less an AI. (In fact, for a David Weber universe the Honorverse has quite limited and specialized "AI"s; not much better than the expert systems we have today.
Jonathan_S wrote:In fact the only mentions of AI in the book with those raids, AAC, are:
1) a glorified automated phone automated attendant that replaces the com officer on Grayson's Katana LACs.
2) The expert system in the Apollo Control missile for managing its brood of missiles and coordinating tracking and attack of its targets.
3) The expert system on the Viper anti-LAC missile for "fire-and-forget" tracking and attack of its targets.
That's it. And none of those have any hint of being sentient systems, nor as I said in the earlier post of being much better than expert systems we have today. RFC hasn't shown us any true, sentient, AIs in the Honorverse.
cthia wrote:Now I never said anything about sentience, just capable. You all know how I feel about the possibility of sentient AI. Ain't gonna happen.
At any rate, I do seem to recall that a computer helped reduce the possibilities. What book was that?
I expect you are thinking about this, from At All Costs: Chapter 22: "There's going to be hell to pay in Congress when news of this is confirmed. People are going to be screaming for additional protection for their constituents, and it's going to be damned hard to tell them no. By the same token, if we're looking at an increased technological inferiority, it's going to be more imperative than ever that we keep our combat power concentrated. I can't begin to predict how that's all going to play out—politics, thank God, aren't part of my turf! But I do know, from the brief conversations I've had so far with the Secretary, that he's going to want some sort of prediction of where they're likely to do this to us next."
"Sir," Lewis said, his expression troubled, "I don't see any way to do that. There are literally dozens of places they could hit us the way they did here. We've got maybe twenty-five or thirty first-tier systems, and that many again secondary or tertiary systems. Without completely dispersing our fleet strength, we can't begin to cover that broad an area against attacks in the strength these demonstrated. And I'm afraid tea leaf-readers have at least as good a chance as my analysts do of predicting which of them we need to cover. For that matter, if they scout aggressively enough, they'll be able to tell where we've beefed up the defenses and simply go someplace else. What they did with their stealthed destroyers and FTL arrays this time around is proof enough of that."
"I assure you, I'm already painfully aware of the points you just raised," Marquette said grimly. "I'm also aware that I'm asking you to do something which is quite possibly impossible. I don't have any choice but to ask you, however, and you don't have any choice but to figure out how to do it anyway. There has to be some sort of underlying pattern to their target selection. I can't believe someone like Harrington is just reaching into a hat and pulling out names at random. For that matter, the spacing on this cluster of raids demonstrates she isn't. So try to get inside her head. Run it through the computers, kick it around, try to get some sort of feel for what kind of tendencies or inclinations may be pushing her choices."
"We can do that, Sir—run it through the computers and kick it around, I mean. Whether or not we can get 'inside her head' is something else entirely. And, Sir, I'm afraid that even if that's possible, we're going to need a bigger sample of her target selections before any pattern begins to suggest itself. In other words, I don't think I'll be able to give you any sort of prediction until after she's hit us again, possibly more than once."
"Understood," Marquette said in a heavy voice. "Do your best. No one's going to expect miracles out of you, but we need your very best on it. If we can guess right, even once, and smack her with heavier forces than she anticipates—maybe even mousetrap one of her raiding forces—we may be able to make them reconsider this entire strategy."
Chapter 29: "Actually, Tom," he said slowly, "there may be a fourth option. Or, at least, one we could try in conjunction with Gobi."
"Really?" Theisman regarded him quizzically.
"Well, Lewis and Linda have handed me their tea leaf—readers' best guess as to the most threatened systems. Their report is full of qualifiers, of course. Not so much because they're trying to cover their asses, as because they really don't have a good predictive model. They're having to use more intuition and old fashioned WAGs than number-crunching at this point, and they don't like it. Despite that, though, I think they're on to something."
"Tell me more," Theisman commanded, and pointed at one of the chairs facing his desk.
"Basically," Marquette said, sitting obediently, "they tried looking at the problem through Manty eyes. They figure the Manties are looking for targets they can anticipate will be fairly lightly defended, but which have enough population and representation to generate a lot of political pressure. They're also hitting systems with a civilian economy which may not be contributing very much to the war effort, but which is large enough to require the federal government to undertake a substantial diversion of emergency assistance when it's destroyed. And it's also pretty clear that they want to impress us with their aggressiveness. That's why they're operating so deep. Well, that and because the deeper they get, the further away from the 'frontline' systems, the less likely we are to have heavy defensive forces in position to intercept them. So that means we should be looking at deep penetration targets, not frontier raids."
"All of that sounds reasonable," Theisman said after considering it. "Logical, anyway. Of course, logic is only as good as its basic assumptions."
"Agreed. But it's worth noting that two of the systems they predicted might be hit were Des Moines and Fordyce."
"They were?" Theisman sat a bit straighter, and Marquette nodded.
"And Chantilly was on their secondary list of less likely targets."
"That is interesting. On the other hand, how many other systems were on their lists?"
"Ten on the primary list and fifteen on the secondary."
"So they hit three out of a total of twenty-five. Twelve percent."
"Which is a hell of a lot better than nothing," Marquette pointed out.
"Oh, no question. But we could fritter away an awful lot of strength trying to cover a list of systems that long without being strong enough in any one place to make a difference."
"That wasn't really what I had in mind."
"Then tell me what you did have in mind."
"You and I—and our analysts, for that matter—agree that these raids represent what's basically a strategy of weakness. They're trying to hurt us and throw us off balance for a minimal investment in forces and minimal losses of their own. So I would submit that we don't really have to stop them dead everywhere; we just have to hammer them really hard once or twice. Hurt them proportionately worse than they're hurting us."
"All right." Theisman nodded. "I'm in agreement so far."
"Well, Javier's doing a lot of expansion work, too, if not as much as Lester. He's been discussing training missions and simulations to fit his new units into existing battle squadrons and task group organizations, and he'd really like a chance to try some of his task force and task group commanders in independent command before it's a life-or-death situation. What if we were to take, say, three or four—maybe a half-dozen—of those task groups and pull them back from the front? We're not going to be committing them to offensive action anytime soon, and it's obvious the Manties aren't going to launch any frontal assaults when they're running this sensitive about losses. So it wouldn't weaken our offensive stance, and it would give us some powerful forces close to likely targets, plus an opportunity to test and refine our new tactical doctrines."
"Ummm . . . ." Theisman gazed into space, the fingers of his right hand drumming lightly on his blotter. He stayed that way for quite some time, then refocused on Marquette.
"I think this has . . . possibilities," he said. "I should've thought of a similar approach on my own, but I guess I've been too fixated on maintaining concentration instead of swanning around in understrength detachments the way we used to operate. There are still some risks involved, though. Strategy of weakness or no, this is clearly their first team we're talking about. If it weren't, Harrington wouldn't be in command of it. So it's not something we want to throw green units in front of."
"I was figuring we'd use detachments working up a relatively smaller percentage of new units," Marquette replied. "And, while I'm thinking about it, I think it would be a very good idea to put Javier himself in position to cover the system we think is most likely to be hit."
This need not mean that they are using much more than an EXCEL spreadsheet. |
