?

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:But if another entity is claiming the wormhole shouldn't it be an act of war to attempt to take it over? Regardless of whether or not said navy intends to transit it. I know that textev states that a navy only has rights to a wormhole if said navy can hold onto it.

The following is based on memory and might be incorrect:

Mannerheim may has current possession, but they do NOT have a legal claim on the wormhole (the ownership of the system is disputed and Mannerheim is not one of the claimants). Note that there are two wormholes involved at Felix and if the GA goes through the other one and finds themselves at Torch, then there are going to be serious questions demanded from Mannerheim.

PS: With regards to recon drone surveillance: if you want you could consider it the same as spying, but note that spying (for us) is a crime and NOT an act of war. A civilian spy in peacetime is jailed (unless exchanged) and a diplomat is just sent home. I think ThinksMarkedly misstated the point about spies, which are normally only shot in wartime (since there is no possibility then of an exchange).

Mannerheim has bought several of the claims - silently through proxies, they are still attempting to settle all the claims.

While this is not on the books, you know, if pressed on the subject, a Mannerheim Admiral will invite the questioning GA admiral over and explain the situation, in private, that he is representing certain private Mannerhein concers that are attempting to acquire the claims. Once again he'll have proof - just enough to convince anyone questioning.

penny wrote:If you do not have proof that a particular navy is guilty, then showing up in a system with an entire triple alliance of warships loaded, cocked and locked with an attitude plus foaming at the mouth isn't exactly the way things should go. That itself is an act of war!

Consider the SL doing the same thing. Showing up in the MBS without stating any prior gripes or diplomatic talks or correspondence at all.

tlb wrote:No, it is NOT an act of war, if you stay outside the hyper-limit and talk. The SLN did not do the same thing, they showed up and demanded surrender.

penny wrote:As I recall that is not what the GA did. They made unacceptable demands like standing down warships, etc. As soon as Galton pridefully acknowledged being a part of the Alignment, which they are, the GA's undies got twisted in a bunch. And of course Galton admitted to being part of the Alignment because they are. And they are darn proud of it.

The GA did NOT make those demands until Generalfieldmarshall Adabayo admitted that the system belonged to the Mesan Alignment; so they were NOT unacceptable, they were exactly the sort of thing said to enemy combatants.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I was thinking about China's own use of a balloon that was shot down by the US that was used for spying. It communicated via a US carrier that transmitted data back to Beijing. If nothing else, I thought it bordered on a de facto state of war. Breaching someone's airspace is not lawful. Nobody knows what technology or weaponry is being carried aboard.

tlb wrote:There are things that are not lawful, but fall short of an act of war. The balloon was not an act of war. If it had carried what are called "weapons of mass destruction", then it could be an act of war. As it happened, it was just an unfriendly act; a step up from the recent North Korean trash balloons.

penny wrote:Nope. It was in a completely different class than North Korea's trash balloons. China's balloon was proved to be a spy balloon illegally using a US carrier without the carrier's permission to transmit illegal spy data.

Are you complaining about the spying or using a US carrier to transmit data? If they did not have the correct equipment to legally connect to the carrier, then why did the carrier allow the connection?

In the past the USA has had the U2, the SR71 and now has various spy satellites to collect data from around the world; all of which are much higher tech than a balloon at the mercy of the wind. So I am not going to place that balloon in a "completely different class".

Admittedly, accessing the carrier could have been somewhat legal by the use of pre purchased equipment like the use of dongles, etc. But using the carrier to transmit spy data back to Beijing is illegal.

At any rate, I assumed China used their many hacking contingencies already placed in US computers, networks etc. That commonly used tactic already has a name. It is called Cyber Warfare.

The difference in the US spy planes is that they did not enter foreign airspace did they? I thought they flew too high to be considered foreign airspace. Where does foreign airspace begin and end? Certainly a satellite in space over a foreign country cannot be deemed as violating foreign airspace. I may be wrong about that. Anyone know?

tlb wrote:Are you complaining about the spying or using a US carrier to transmit data? If they did not have the correct equipment to legally connect to the carrier, then why did the carrier allow the connection?

In the past the USA has had the U2, the SR71 and now has various spy satellites to collect data from around the world; all of which are much higher tech than a balloon at the mercy of the wind. So I am not going to place that balloon in a "completely different class".

penny wrote:Admittedly, accessing the carrier could have been somewhat legal by the use of pre purchased equipment like the use of dongles, etc. But using the carrier to transmit spy data back to Beijing is illegal.

At any rate, I assumed China used their many hacking contingencies already placed in US computers, networks etc. That commonly used tactic already has a name. It is called Cyber Warfare.

The difference in the US spy planes is that they did not enter foreign airspace did they? I thought they flew too high to be considered foreign airspace. Where does foreign airspace begin and end? Certainly a satellite in space over a foreign country cannot be deemed as violating foreign airspace. I may be wrong about that. Anyone know?

The spy planes definitely flew over the terrain that they were photographing. The U2 was the source of the photos that showed USSR missiles in Cuba and of course one was shot down over Russia (Francis Gary Powers, the pilot was captured). If an airplane can fly in it, then it is still airspace.

Perhaps there is an airspace treaty that lets satellites pass. If the USA will not disclose a photo of a place of interest, then sometimes Russia will: I believe that is how people got the pictures of Area 51 (since the Air Force never disclosed it).

As for the Chinese balloon, unless it actually found classified data, then it did not do any illegal spying and so did not transmit spy data to Beijing.

penny wrote:
The difference in the US spy planes is that they did not enter foreign airspace did they? I thought they flew too high to be considered foreign airspace. Where does foreign airspace begin and end? Certainly a satellite in space over a foreign country cannot be deemed as violating foreign airspace. I may be wrong about that. Anyone know?

There was this dude named Gary Powers who was all over the headlines some years back... ever hear what happened to him?

tlb wrote:The GA did NOT make those demands until Generalfieldmarshall Adabayo admitted that the system belonged to the Mesan Alignment; so they were NOT unacceptable, they were exactly the sort of thing said to enemy combatants.

Expanding on the post from above:

To End in Fire, pg 798 (~93%) wrote:"Hello, Admiral Harrington," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"So you recognize me." Harrington smiled thinly after the inevitable delay. "This should make things simpler. May I ask who I'm speaking to?"

"I am Generalfeldmarshall Karoline Adebayo, the governor of this system. In, as I assume your presence here indicates you already know, the name of the Mesan Alignment."

"No beating around the bush, I see. Good. In that case, I'll be brief. I represent the Star Empire of Manticore, the Andermani Empire, and the Protectorate of Grayson, and the purpose of this conversation is to give you the opportunity to surrender to the forces of the Grand Alliance under my command. I would advise you to take it."

Harrington's soprano voice was colder than space, but her eyes were colder still.

"Why should I?" Adebayo asked calmly.

"Because if you don't, I will open fire and destroy every fortress and warship in this star system."

The sequence of events is that Adebayo first identified herself and the system as being part of the Mesan Alignment, at which point Honor demanded her surrender. Adebayo did not attempt to say the GA had committed a major intel blunder and arrived in the wrong system, or blamed the wrong people. She did not even attempt to deny the MAlign's involvement.

At which point Honor promised to attack the military targets.

She continued:

To End in Fire, pg 798 (~93%) wrote:"Understand me," she said then. "Nothing would give me greater personal satisfaction than to simply open fire and kill every man and woman under your command. My star nation and its allies—and I personally—hold you responsible for millions of deaths your 'Alignment' has directly inflicted in the Manticore Binary System, Beowulf, and on Mesa, and for every Manticoran, Grayson, Havenite, and Solarian killed in the war you provoked between the Grand Alliance and the Solarian League. We intend to end that. We intend to end you... and we will."

Her chilled steel voice was calm, almost dispassionate, and that only made its sincerity even more terrible.

"Unlike the Alignment, however, we actually care about the blood on our hands. And because we do, I'm offering you this opportunity to surrender. Be advised, however, that if you do, every individual in a command position, at the very least, will face potential trials for crimes against humanity on a truly galactic scale. There are no promises of immunity, no guarantees. There's only the opportunity to at least spare your personnel. You have two hours to consider my offer. If you haven't accepted by at the end of that time, my forces will open fire."

(emphasis mine)

Honor opened communications to demand surrender and promised that there would be trials, presumably fair ones where the defendants would be given ample opportunity to defend themselves. Whether such would-be defendants would ever believe the trial would be a fair one is moot; Honor knew the Grand Alliance would conduct them fairly and thus the legalities would be met.

Adebayo's response comes right after the channel closed:

To End in Fire, pg 799 (~94%) wrote:"I think it's time for Shuttlecock," she said. "Execute as soon as you can."

So, again, no protestations on innocence. Adebayo could later argue that she didn't believe Honor's sincerity and had no choice but to defend her star system. But that's again not Honor's problem: she followed the letter of the law and was willing to lose a significant tactical advantage in delaying any action for 2 hours.

Filareta did no such thing.

BTW, since I was reading these passages, on the comparative stealth levels:

To End in Fire, pg 788 (~92%); GSNSS Irving Fischer wrote:"We can't confirm it, Generalfeldmarshall," Auberjonois said, "but we're certain they're flooding the system with recon platforms of their own. We've seen just a few weak impeller traces, but their drones are obviously just as hard to find as we thought they'd be."
[...]
Auberjonois nodded. They knew the Grand Alliance's reconnaissance drones were both highly stealthy and, courtesy of their onboard micro fusion plants, extraordinarily long-legged. The Alignment's tech might actually be even better, however. It was certainly better than anything the Solarian League had ever had, and Galton's defenders had produced two different recon platforms. The Alpha Drones incorporated every upgrade the Alignment possessed, although their power budget remained badly limited compared to the Grand Alliance's Ghost Riders, while the Beta Drones were virtual clones of the SLN's current technology."

To End in Fire, pg 796 (~93%) wrote:"I think I know what part of the delay was, Ma'am," he said. "The transmission's a standard com laser, but it's coming from a platform less than two hundred thousand kilometers from Crick. And sensors are picking up directional grav-pulses from the same platform."

"And we didn't know it was there until it started talking to us?"

"No, Ma'am."

[...]
"Two things before I do, though." She stook her hand from Nerguizian's shoulder and folder her arms. "First, they got an FTL communications relay within two hundred thousand kilometers of Crick without us ever seeing it coming."

To End in Fire, pg 801 (~94%), HMS Imperator wrote:Ransom's hands were busy at his command station as he spoke, and Petersen turned to her plot as he threw Imperator's Combat Information Center's fresh datapoint onto it. The new icon blinked with the rapid strobe of an unidentified contact, and Ransom was right. It was headed towards Grand Fleet from the inner-system and moving a lot faster than the elusive recon drones they'd detected earlier. The Alignment had deployed two different types of recon platforms, one which was obviously virtually identical to SLN's last-generation drones and one that was one hell of a lot stealthier. Petersen agreed with Duchess Harrington and Captain Jaruvalski that they wouldn't have mixed them that way if they hadn't hoped to learn how readily Grand Fleet could detect, lock up, and destroy their first-team platforms. Which was why Grand Fleet had declined to attempt anything of the sort.

Not that Petersen was at all confident that they could have taken the stealthy ones down if they had tried.

What this tells us that the GF had picked up the Alpha Drones, which are described by the narrator (following Adebayo's mind) as incorporating "every upgrade the Alignment possessed." Not "every upgrade the Alignment allowed Galton," but "possessed" though I'll grant that that may still fall short of the active camouflage smart paint, but not by a lot, and definitely not an even stealthier drive system. The GF couldn't lock up those drones sufficiently to take them completely down, but they knew they were there.

Meanwhile, the Galton Navy could pick just a few weak impeller traces from the Ghost Riders, and definitely not at all the Hermes relay buoy, and the latter got to two thirds of a light-second. Remember that the experiment we know about detecting spider ships was conducted by the MAN at one full light-second.

The narrator is also saying that the Alignment's stealth may be superior, which is contradicted by facts. It's likely that the narrator was indeed just relaying Adebayo's train of thought and, at that point in time, they had not known the relay buoy was there yet. I'll also grant that the relay buoy is no recon drone and probably has a weaker impeller; it certainly took longer to start the communications than the detection of the recon drones, though that's partially explained by the need to achieve a zero relative velocity.

And bringing back again to whether Galton can be believed to be the final redoubt: nothing in the MBS could pick up the graser torpedoes before they opened fire, and yet the GF could pick up the Alpha Drones. I'll grant that the GF sensors may have improved in the year and a half since, but the RMN will know if their sensors of the time could have picked up these drones.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And bringing back again to whether Galton can be believed to be the final redoubt: nothing in the MBS could pick up the graser torpedoes before they opened fire, and yet the GF could pick up the Alpha Drones. I'll grant that the GF sensors may have improved in the year and a half since, but the RMN will know if their sensors of the time could have picked up these drones.

Two differences:
1) The GA fleet had an enormous number of Ghost Rider drones deployed, which made detection distance that much shorter. During Oyster Bay, people would not be as alert and would not have Ghost Rider deployed.
2) The Galton drones were in powered flight, while the OB torpedoes could be ballistic with no wedge to detect (even though we know they were actually spider drive). Just as the Cataphract pods did come in ballistic and so were not seen until the missiles fired.

I understand your desire, but the spider drives were only important for the weapons in building up the speed before going mostly ballistic. Because the positions of the space stations could be predicted with such accuracy, that drive was not really needed to get into graser range. The crucial use of the spider drive was with the Ghost scouts, which wandered around in system without being noticed.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And bringing back again to whether Galton can be believed to be the final redoubt: nothing in the MBS could pick up the graser torpedoes before they opened fire, and yet the GF could pick up the Alpha Drones. I'll grant that the GF sensors may have improved in the year and a half since, but the RMN will know if their sensors of the time could have picked up these drones.

Two differences:
1) The GA fleet had an enormous number of Ghost Rider drones deployed, which made detection distance that much shorter. During Oyster Bay, people would not be as alert and would not have Ghost Rider deployed.
2) The Galton drones were in powered flight, while the OB torpedoes could be ballistic with no wedge to detect (even though we know they were actually spider drive). Just as the Cataphract pods did come in ballistic and so were not seen until the missiles fired.

I understand your desire, but the spider drives were only important for the weapons in building up the speed before going mostly ballistic. Because the positions of the space stations could be predicted with such accuracy, that drive was not really needed to get into graser range. The crucial use of the spider drive was with the Ghost scouts, which wandered around in system without being noticed.

Excellent assessment. In a time of peace it isn't exactly accurate to say there won't be as many GA drones swanning around about the system. There won't be any. And the navy will not be at battle stations, nor will they be looking for needles in a haystack.

I am not sure whether a lower power budget has anything to do with the efficacy of the stealth.

It was suggested once before that the statement claiming the MA’s stealth might be better is just the thoughts of Adebayo. I think that is reaching.

What's more, since Megan Petersen still was unsure the MA's probes could be locked up and destroyed even with as many Manty probes seeded in the system isn't something the GA can write home about either.

tlb wrote:Two differences:
1) The GA fleet had an enormous number of Ghost Rider drones deployed, which made detection distance that much shorter. During Oyster Bay, people would not be as alert and would not have Ghost Rider deployed.
2) The Galton drones were in powered flight, while the OB torpedoes could be ballistic with no wedge to detect (even though we know they were actually spider drive). Just as the Cataphract pods did come in ballistic and so were not seen until the missiles fired.

And those are fair differences, but the distance one works the other way around too: the g-torps had to approach an area with intense traffic (one of them went through the opening of the wedge of a ship!), whereas drones approaching the GF at the hyperlimit would be very widely spaced apart from each other and from the GR drones that picked them up. Even the space between GR drones that forms the shell around the GF (outside of the LAC shell) is wide. I'd venture there were more ships at the same distance around HMSS Hephaestus than the GF had of drones during the Battle of Galton.

And on the powered flight, it looks like the GF let the Alpha and Beta drones to get to essentially station-keeping to the GF, at maybe a million km away, meaning they had stopped accelerating. Granted, the GF might have noticed them before they stopped decelerating and thus just kept a sensor lock in the probable position, but back to the first point.

I understand your desire, but the spider drives were only important for the weapons in building up the speed before going mostly ballistic. Because the positions of the space stations could be predicted with such accuracy, that drive was not really needed to get into graser range. The crucial use of the spider drive was with the Ghost scouts, which wandered around in system without being noticed.

The ships did decelerate from cruising speed about a day out too and that was not picked up, not even by the very sensitive gravitic network around Manticore. It's simple Maths to calculate the average speed the attackers took between the hyper transition and the attack, and that does not match the speed the weapons were moving at when they became detected. Given that there's an upper speed limit at 0.8c, that also puts a maximum distance that the attackers could have decelerated from and still achieved the attack velocity in that time period. So the RMN has to answer: if those had used wedges, could they have detected them?

From White Haven's reaction in the aftermath, the answer was "yes" and thus that explains why they thought it was a new drive system, not wedges. Even if it were wedges, the question remains: are the weapons detected and captured at Galton stealthy enough to have been missed during their deceleration phase?