KEYHOLE REFIT

Varangian wrote:So just curious.

Could the Medusa and GSN early flight Harrington SD(P) be refitted with Keyhole?

I know it is a space/volume issue, but is there any other reason- cost?

At All Costs - Ch 52 wrote:only ships built with Keyhole capability from the outset can handle the Mark Two platforms, and they're essential to making the new missiles work. We can refit with Keyhole II—in fact, the decision to build that in is part of what's delayed the Andermani refits—but it requires placing the ship in yard hands for at least six weeks

runsforcelery - Refitting to the Keyhole-II standard
( June 29, 2005) wrote:I'd estimate, however, that the time requirement to install this system aboard any ship (pod-layers or pre-pod) from scratch would be a minimum of four to six months.

Varangian wrote:So just curious.

Could the Medusa and GSN early flight Harrington SD(P) be refitted with Keyhole?

I know it is a space/volume issue, but is there any other reason- cost?

cthia wrote:Personally I appreciate this thread because I never understood the big deal when refitting for Keyhole, and even less for Keyhole II. They are simply platforms, so I thought, simply bolt them to the exterior of the hull, somewhere. And why did the upgrade come at the expense of pods, or anything else if the platforms were mounted to the hull?

Mine eyes have been opened.

But surely they would be upgraded before mothballs claimed them?

runsforcelery wrote:Keyhole-One was originally envisioned solely as a telemetry relay platform. Think of it being something along the lines of a submarine raising its radio mast to transmit. The idea was to get a control platform outside the boundaries of the wedge in order to allow a ship's fire control to establish and maintain telemetry links around the interfering barrier of the wedge. Moreover, the original concept concentrated almost entirely on considerations of improved offensive fire control, which did include the idea of giving greater flexibility to target management. In particular, one of the very early concepts was to facilitate "hand-off" between ships, allowing the ship with the best "visibility" to manage fire from her consorts, but did not include any great concern with managing counter-missile fire, extending sensor reach, or making any direct contribution to the mounting ship's close-in defenses.

As the concept began working its way through development, however, it began to evolve. Initially, the idea had been that each ship would carry a large number of relatively small, cheap, expendable communications platforms. They would be outside the wedge and the side walls, and thus vulnerable, and what they were expected to do was relatively simple. The RMN's remote sensor platform capability was already good enough that the emphasis was on a cheap platform designed purely to communicate with outgoing missiles.

In the development process, BuWeaps came to consider additional missions Keyhole might be expanded to include. One of the very first was to include additional telemetry links for counter-missiles. Another early contender was to use the new system to expand a ship's "onboard" sensor perimeter, giving it better "situational awareness" in its own area, regardless of where the remote sensor platforms might be deployed. As its mission and capacity grew, Keyhole became a steadily more sophisticated and capable — and thus larger and less expendable — platform. As it incorporated its own sensor suite and expanded its communications, it became increasingly valuable (in both the tactical and the logistical senses), which made it only logical to fit it with its own point defense. It was made as stealthy as something radiating as powerfully as it did could be made, and it was equipped with its own rudimentary ECM in order to make it more difficult to localize it and destroy it. And, of course, each incremental increase in capability brought with it its own incremental increase in size and cost. You can, if you will, think of this as setting out to design the F-16, or even the A-10, and ending up with the F-15. Every step along the way made absolute, demonstrable, unquestionable good military sense, and the final product was worth every penny of investment, and yet what emerged at the end of the developmental process had changed so much in degree that it had ended up changed in kind, as well. It was, effectively, a completely different animal from the initial concept.

So, at the end of the development process (I'm speaking here of Keyhole-One development), the original cheap, expendable, single-function telemetry link had evolved into a highly capable platform which was an integral part of the mounting ship's sensor suite, provided a much more capable communications node then had originally been envisioned, was stealthy and hard for any opponent to lock up for offensive fire control, and which possessed sufficient onboard point defense capability to not simply defend itself but offer a significant increase in the mounting ship's close-in defenses, as well. The platform itself is stuffed full of essential equipment and hardware, but probably at least a quarter of Keyhole-One's capabilities depend on computer support aboard, and (especially) power generation from, the mounting ship.

The original Keyhole-One platform was about the size of a LAC. The more fully developed Keyhole-One platform carried aboard units like the Nike-class battlecruisers is substantially larger, and fitting a ship to carry it costs quite a bit of potential broadside armament space. It also presents some armoring difficulties, since the platform itself has to be armored when it is tractored into its bay on the exterior of the mounting ship, and the bay itself has to be armored in order to protect the ship when the platform is deployed. Because of those considerations, at the moment, no Keyhole-capable ship currently carries more than one platform in each broadside. This would give a squadron of six ships 12 Keyholes, and, especially given the platform's elusiveness and self-defending capability, the RMN regards this as sufficient to guarantee reasonable survivability through redundancy.

Keyhole-Two is another can of worms entirely. First, the platforms themselves are substantially larger. While the final (or, at least, currently final) generation of Keyhole-One is somewhere around 65,000 tons (or darned near the size of a prewar destroyer), Keyhole-Two is even larger. This is because in addition to the requirement that it must retain its light-speed telemetry links for counter-missiles and non-Apollo shipkillers, it must also fit in the dedicated FTL coms used to communicate with the Apollo control missiles. In other words, a Keyhole-Two platform has to be "bilingual," with the capability to perform its Apollo control function in addition to all of the standard Keyhole-One functions, and this inevitably drives size upward. It is also even more heavily defended, since each platform is individually bigger (and more expensive), represents a larger increment of the mounting ship's capabilities, and (because of its size and emission signature) is a less elusive target. The power budget is also substantially greater. A very large percentage of the computer support carried on board by Keyhole-One has to be located inside the mounting ship, which eats into the ship's internal volume. Additional power generation and transmitting equipment is also necessary, which eats even further into internal volume.

A superdreadnought fitted with Keyhole-One can be re-fitted with Keyhole-Two fairly quickly. Note the use of the word "fairly." Essentially, the superdreadnought has sufficient volume inside its protected core hull that fitting in the additional equipment — while not especially easy — is much simpler than it would be in, say, a Keyhole-One-equipped battlecruiser. Every superdreadnought so far fitted with Keyhole has been a pod-layer, and the quickest and simplest way to accommodate Keyhole-Two is to partition off one end of the central missile core, armor it thoroughly, and then mount the required equipment in the protected space thus created. This somewhat reduces ammunition stowage, does not give you ideal access for servicing and routine maintenance, and leaves the critical new components at least marginally more vulnerable than they would be if they were located inside the core hull proper. On the other hand, any hit which got to the onboard end of the Keyhole-Two installation would almost certainly have to come up the missile core from aft. In such a case, they hit would already have done so much damage that the ship's true main battery — it's missile pods — would already have been mission-killed. Note, however, that a ship need not be able to launch its own pods in order to control someone else's pods through its Keyhole platforms, so theoretically, at least, even a superdreadnought whose missile core had been completely gutted could still be combat-effective. For example, a consort whose own fire control had been crippled might well roll pods for an SD(P) which had lost its own missile core but still had Keyhole-Two capability.

cthia wrote:Personally I appreciate this thread because I never understood the big deal when refitting for Keyhole, and even less for Keyhole II. They are simply platforms, so I thought, simply bolt them to the exterior of the hull, somewhere. And why did the upgrade come at the expense of pods, or anything else if the platforms were mounted to the hull?

Mine eyes have been opened.

But surely they would be upgraded before mothballs claimed them?

Jonathan_S wrote:Here's what RFC said about their size and complexity in this 2009 post

runsforcelery wrote:Keyhole-One was originally envisioned solely as a telemetry relay platform. Think of it being something along the lines of a submarine raising its radio mast to transmit. The idea was to get a control platform outside the boundaries of the wedge in order to allow a ship's fire control to establish and maintain telemetry links around the interfering barrier of the wedge. Moreover, the original concept concentrated almost entirely on considerations of improved offensive fire control, which did include the idea of giving greater flexibility to target management. In particular, one of the very early concepts was to facilitate "hand-off" between ships, allowing the ship with the best "visibility" to manage fire from her consorts, but did not include any great concern with managing counter-missile fire, extending sensor reach, or making any direct contribution to the mounting ship's close-in defenses.

As the concept began working its way through development, however, it began to evolve. Initially, the idea had been that each ship would carry a large number of relatively small, cheap, expendable communications platforms. They would be outside the wedge and the side walls, and thus vulnerable, and what they were expected to do was relatively simple. The RMN's remote sensor platform capability was already good enough that the emphasis was on a cheap platform designed purely to communicate with outgoing missiles.

In the development process, BuWeaps came to consider additional missions Keyhole might be expanded to include. One of the very first was to include additional telemetry links for counter-missiles. Another early contender was to use the new system to expand a ship's "onboard" sensor perimeter, giving it better "situational awareness" in its own area, regardless of where the remote sensor platforms might be deployed. As its mission and capacity grew, Keyhole became a steadily more sophisticated and capable — and thus larger and less expendable — platform. As it incorporated its own sensor suite and expanded its communications, it became increasingly valuable (in both the tactical and the logistical senses), which made it only logical to fit it with its own point defense. It was made as stealthy as something radiating as powerfully as it did could be made, and it was equipped with its own rudimentary ECM in order to make it more difficult to localize it and destroy it. And, of course, each incremental increase in capability brought with it its own incremental increase in size and cost. You can, if you will, think of this as setting out to design the F-16, or even the A-10, and ending up with the F-15. Every step along the way made absolute, demonstrable, unquestionable good military sense, and the final product was worth every penny of investment, and yet what emerged at the end of the developmental process had changed so much in degree that it had ended up changed in kind, as well. It was, effectively, a completely different animal from the initial concept.

So, at the end of the development process (I'm speaking here of Keyhole-One development), the original cheap, expendable, single-function telemetry link had evolved into a highly capable platform which was an integral part of the mounting ship's sensor suite, provided a much more capable communications node then had originally been envisioned, was stealthy and hard for any opponent to lock up for offensive fire control, and which possessed sufficient onboard point defense capability to not simply defend itself but offer a significant increase in the mounting ship's close-in defenses, as well. The platform itself is stuffed full of essential equipment and hardware, but probably at least a quarter of Keyhole-One's capabilities depend on computer support aboard, and (especially) power generation from, the mounting ship.

The original Keyhole-One platform was about the size of a LAC. The more fully developed Keyhole-One platform carried aboard units like the Nike-class battlecruisers is substantially larger, and fitting a ship to carry it costs quite a bit of potential broadside armament space. It also presents some armoring difficulties, since the platform itself has to be armored when it is tractored into its bay on the exterior of the mounting ship, and the bay itself has to be armored in order to protect the ship when the platform is deployed. Because of those considerations, at the moment, no Keyhole-capable ship currently carries more than one platform in each broadside. This would give a squadron of six ships 12 Keyholes, and, especially given the platform's elusiveness and self-defending capability, the RMN regards this as sufficient to guarantee reasonable survivability through redundancy.

Keyhole-Two is another can of worms entirely. First, the platforms themselves are substantially larger. While the final (or, at least, currently final) generation of Keyhole-One is somewhere around 65,000 tons (or darned near the size of a prewar destroyer), Keyhole-Two is even larger. This is because in addition to the requirement that it must retain its light-speed telemetry links for counter-missiles and non-Apollo shipkillers, it must also fit in the dedicated FTL coms used to communicate with the Apollo control missiles. In other words, a Keyhole-Two platform has to be "bilingual," with the capability to perform its Apollo control function in addition to all of the standard Keyhole-One functions, and this inevitably drives size upward. It is also even more heavily defended, since each platform is individually bigger (and more expensive), represents a larger increment of the mounting ship's capabilities, and (because of its size and emission signature) is a less elusive target. The power budget is also substantially greater. A very large percentage of the computer support carried on board by Keyhole-One has to be located inside the mounting ship, which eats into the ship's internal volume. Additional power generation and transmitting equipment is also necessary, which eats even further into internal volume.

A superdreadnought fitted with Keyhole-One can be re-fitted with Keyhole-Two fairly quickly. Note the use of the word "fairly." Essentially, the superdreadnought has sufficient volume inside its protected core hull that fitting in the additional equipment — while not especially easy — is much simpler than it would be in, say, a Keyhole-One-equipped battlecruiser. Every superdreadnought so far fitted with Keyhole has been a pod-layer, and the quickest and simplest way to accommodate Keyhole-Two is to partition off one end of the central missile core, armor it thoroughly, and then mount the required equipment in the protected space thus created. This somewhat reduces ammunition stowage, does not give you ideal access for servicing and routine maintenance, and leaves the critical new components at least marginally more vulnerable than they would be if they were located inside the core hull proper. On the other hand, any hit which got to the onboard end of the Keyhole-Two installation would almost certainly have to come up the missile core from aft. In such a case, they hit would already have done so much damage that the ship's true main battery — it's missile pods — would already have been mission-killed. Note, however, that a ship need not be able to launch its own pods in order to control someone else's pods through its Keyhole platforms, so theoretically, at least, even a superdreadnought whose missile core had been completely gutted could still be combat-effective. For example, a consort whose own fire control had been crippled might well roll pods for an SD(P) which had lost its own missile core but still had Keyhole-Two capability.

So making space to carry around a pair of platforms bigger than destroyers, plus the tractors, beamed power, ultra-high-bandwidth telemetry link antenna, shipboard computing support equipement, etc. etc. is a major ask.

In a retrofit simply carving out the broadside docking area for them requires removing the tubes, CM launchers, PDLC, antenna, etc. that were already occupying that prime real estate, cutting away and reshaping the armor belt to create the 'divot' this thing will semi-recess into is a major project; and that's just the exterior work.

Even going from Keyhole I to Keyhole II would require enlarging that docking area; so carving away and reshaping the hull armor; quite possibly removing (or displacing) all the things that used to abut the Keyhole I dock.

And all that in addition to the massive interior support hardware and computing power, that kzt likes to complain about , required to utilize the thing.

Theemile wrote:
I guess it's not all Computers - part of it is for Pod extension cord storage