?

penny wrote:In my scenario, I was thinking that the hyper raider could see when the prey hypers out because said prey would disappear from the sensors of a raider who is already very close.

Good point. The raider doesn't need to see a transition to know a transition has happened. The same is not true for the ready squadron because the raider won't be in their sensors, if it's running on its spider drive or just coasting ballistically.

11 light seconds is not a lot of time to be comfortable, though. As someone said above (maybe Jonathan), they won't know that they've been detected by luck or skill until it's too late. At 11 light-seconds, a missile going into sprint mode takes only 85 seconds to arrive, which is too short for any ship without a hypergenerator on stand-by. Heck, 11 light-seconds is within CM range for the RMN ship.

Having the hypergenerator on stand-by makes it even more risky, because that may be putting out betraying emissions. And even then, 85 seconds is too short for a cruiser-sized ship to translate up. A CM at 130000 gravities takes only 71 seconds... and 11 of which are light-lag. So the raider has 60 seconds between seeing a launch and having the missiles arrive upon it.

No, unless the MAN ship is supremely confident it will not be found, it only has two strategies left: leave now to avoid contact, or:

But if this is a hyper raider who has tricks up its sleeve, is it really going to run? If it has a 3-second firing energy weapon and has the acceleration advantage because of upgraded screens... and sensors are significantly better, then why would it necessarily run? It is optimized for hyper warfare. I disagree with Theemile on the possibility of a 3-second firing energy weapon. More on that later.

Right, if the cruiser-sized raider can take on an RMN destroyer, it may want to do that. That might be a good idea if the destroyer in question is not the latest generation, but an older one that is still in service.

The 3-second-firing graser is not useful, because the range is too long. The raider can't predict exactly where the ready squadron will emerge, so it can't pre-place a torpedo (even assuming it can carry one). The chance that any ship from the squadron comes into graser range is small.

The chance that all the ships of the squadron come into range is zero. Therefore, if the raider fires, it dies and I've made the calculation that on a 1:1 exchange with the RMN (let alone the entire GA), the RMN wins. Its only option is to deploy a remote weapon like the torpedo, of which it will have a very limited supply of, and hope it can kill a destroyer. If it has to bug out, it won't be able to recover the torpedo.

And having a torpedo come into graser range of a ship that is running its sensors at maximum sensitivity looking for a ghost is not the smartest idea either.

But the spider-drive works in hyper, and the raider has an accel advantage in impeller mode and adequately upgraded sensors. (I'm changing that from marginally or significantly to adequately, more on that below.)*

Accel advantage over freighters, yes. Not over warships, couriers or DBs.

A raider in hyper with DDs giving a stern chase can simply out accelerate them to the point where their sensor range becomes iffy. The raider then drops pods of stealthy spider-driven g-torps awaiting the DDs to catch up. The DDs will be too busy flexing their muscles and showing off their alleged accel advantage to properly scan for traps. Says the spider to the flies. Bye bye DDs.

A raider cannot out-accelerate a DD. If you meant it can accelerate to a higher top speed, yes... but that takes 10 hours.

Dropping mines in hyper is an interesting tactic. Dropping mines is exactly what Honor/Sarnow did at Hancock, after all.

However, they're too close for this to work. If the DDs are chasing something, that means they are within missile range. They don't need to get any closer to take out the raider. Though there's a question of whether they'd fire before trying to communicate a few more times.

Or, a raider could certainly lie doggo in hyper where sensors are even more iffy. Lying doggo in hyper should work even better than lying doggo in n-space. Especially with spider technology. Plus, with the smart paint there will be no eye contact before the engagement. A 3-second firing energy weapon from inside your pajamas is going to roast your nuts. Running into an ambush of mine-like g-torps is going to make a hell of a display of flaming datum.

See above on being within graser range and laying traps.

And do consider that subs work in packs. If when raiders are hypering in their sensor ghosts are too faint to discern the number of ships, and or if the raider is part of a pack and it sees its comrade has to run, the pack can enter hyper ahead of the chase and spin a web, says the spider to the incoming flies!

Good idea: let the destroyers see one of the raiders leave, so they stop looking for the ones they didn't know were there.

If the hyper raider is a hybrid, why can't it also have a streak drive where it simply selects a band where the pursuers cannot follow?

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That's only useful if the raider is leaving the system. The ready squadron is not going to give chase outside of the system anyway.

Going to the Iota or Kappa band for a micro-jump is not very useful. It will take a lot of time and energy, add to wear and tear on the generator, for little gain. Especially since all evidence points to not being able to follow anyone after a translation.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:What is the order of battle of the DesRon squadron? Let's say a Wolfpack squadron is at least 3 ships and the mine-torps are as small as possible. Even if they can only carry two apiece that is 6 g-torp mines laid in a web for one spider to lure the DesRon in.

A full Destroyer Squadron (DesRon)? IIRC 3-4 divisions each with 4 ships - so 12-16 destroyers.

The ships of the "ready squadron" going to investigate an anomalous hyper emergence may not be a full Desron. I imagine it's half a squadron (4 ships) or a single division (2 ships), depending on the total and thus the rank of the system in question.

penny wrote:What is the order of battle of the DesRon squadron? Let's say a Wolfpack squadron is at least 3 ships and the mine-torps are as small as possible. Even if they can only carry two apiece that is 6 g-torp mines laid in a web for one spider to lure the DesRon in.

See above: they don't know where the DesRon is going to emerge from hyper. For one thing, short-range hyperspace trips are imprecise. For another, they are going into potential battle, so they definitely do not want to be predictable and arrive within energy weapons' range.

The hyper raiders (I think we should call them "missile boats") may have deployed torpedoes, but as I said above, it's a risky proposition to try and get a torpedo into range of a ship that is running its sensors at maximum and has deployed Ghost Riders. The torpedo is not going to have as good a suite of sensors as the Ghost Riders, so even assuming the MAN has the technology and even assuming the MAN ships have the sensors to see a Ghost Rider, the torpedoes won't. So the torpedoes have to sneak into range of the destroyers in this insanely short range engagement without being seen first. They can't shoot at the Ghost Riders because they are one-use weapons.

Then, we're talking about a minimum of a division of destroyers. Even assuming you can snare one, you can't snare both of them.

In all, this is a tactic that may succeed, but its probability of success is way too low and the risk factor is way too high because they are running with no wedges inside the opponent's CM range!. A glancing shot from an RMN missile is at a minimum mission-kill for the spider ship. At worst, it becomes crippled, unable to translate to hyper to bug out, and unable to scuttle completely, leaving behind technology for the RMN to study.

Also consider the tactical flexibility of being able to station your colliers and support ships in a hyper band inaccessible to the enemy. Technically hanging out in the attic of your own house. Unprecedented tactical flexibility.

By the time the MAN has this many ships to execute your strategy, the GA will have streak drives.

However, the "ready squadron" investigating hyper emergences is unlikely to be so equipped for the foreseeable future.

But if a Collier is laying stealthy g-torps in hyper, that is worse than stumbling into hell itself. Hyper Warfare MAN style.

Same problem as the emergence into n-space: you can't lay mines or torpedoes if you don't know where the opposing ships will be. And you can't lead them by the nose with a detection signal because they don't have to approach: they can send GRs and missiles.

No, if you wanted to attrit the ready squadrons, a better tactic would be do use a Q-ship that looks like a freighter. This ship emerges from hyper well outside normal range, so the ready squadron comes to investigate. When they arrive, they find what they were expecting to see: a freighter with an engineering casualty. So they approach to offer assistance, at which point the torpedoes fire. Note also how a Q-ship with the volume of a freighter would have room to carry torpedoes.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:What is the order of battle of the DesRon squadron? Let's say a Wolfpack squadron is at least 3 ships and the mine-torps are as small as possible. Even if they can only carry two apiece that is 6 g-torp mines laid in a web for one spider to lure the DesRon in.

See above: they don't know where the DesRon is going to emerge from hyper. For one thing, short-range hyperspace trips are imprecise. For another, they are going into potential battle, so they definitely do not want to be predictable and arrive within energy weapons' range.

The hyper raiders (I think we should call them "missile boats") may have deployed torpedoes, but as I said above, it's a risky proposition to try and get a torpedo into range of a ship that is running its sensors at maximum and has deployed Ghost Riders. The torpedo is not going to have as good a suite of sensors as the Ghost Riders, so even assuming the MAN has the technology and even assuming the MAN ships have the sensors to see a Ghost Rider, the torpedoes won't. So the torpedoes have to sneak into range of the destroyers in this insanely short range engagement without being seen first. They can't shoot at the Ghost Riders because they are one-use weapons.

Then, we're talking about a minimum of a division of destroyers. Even assuming you can snare one, you can't snare both of them.

In all, this is a tactic that may succeed, but its probability of success is way too low and the risk factor is way too high because they are running with no wedges inside the opponent's CM range!. A glancing shot from an RMN missile is at a minimum mission-kill for the spider ship. At worst, it becomes crippled, unable to translate to hyper to bug out, and unable to scuttle completely, leaving behind technology for the RMN to study.

Also consider the tactical flexibility of being able to station your colliers and support ships in a hyper band inaccessible to the enemy. Technically hanging out in the attic of your own house. Unprecedented tactical flexibility.

By the time the MAN has this many ships to execute your strategy, the GA will have streak drives.

However, the "ready squadron" investigating hyper emergences is unlikely to be so equipped for the foreseeable future.

But if a Collier is laying stealthy g-torps in hyper, that is worse than stumbling into hell itself. Hyper Warfare MAN style.

Same problem as the emergence into n-space: you can't lay mines or torpedoes if you don't know where the opposing ships will be. And you can't lead them by the nose with a detection signal because they don't have to approach: they can send GRs and missiles.

No, if you wanted to attrit the ready squadrons, a better tactic would be do use a Q-ship that looks like a freighter. This ship emerges from hyper well outside normal range, so the ready squadron comes to investigate. When they arrive, they find what they were expecting to see: a freighter with an engineering casualty. So they approach to offer assistance, at which point the torpedoes fire. Note also how a Q-ship with the volume of a freighter would have room to carry torpedoes.

Hyper raiders are not meant to engage warships in the open before a full-scale invasion, or until war has begun. Hyper raiders do not want to be seen while the hyper raiding phase is going down.

Dunno how my tactic got to be bassackwards. I am responding to someone saying that hyper raiders will be chased and followed into hyper. I don't think that is a good idea, says the spider to the fly.

I realized late that you guys are talking about the desron possibly hypering in close enough to detect the raiders. I didn't think about that. But now that I am, the raiders should leave their generators ready. If they are at the far edge of the hyper limit, why should they worry about betraying emissions? They are not there to engage. Hyper out if the enemy gets too close for comfort. Rinse. Repeat. That is what ships traditionally do anyway when antagonizing systems, no?

But if a hyper raider can lure a desron into hyper after mine layers have laid their stealthy g-torps, they can lead a desron right into hell. That is how Courvosier was killed in n-space. The tactic should work even better in hyper.

There has to be something very dangerous about an enemy that can set up a base right in your attic out of your reach in a higher hyper band. But close enough to resupply ships very quickly.

Question. Where is the ready squadron hypering in from???

Question. How many g-torps can a freighter hold?

Question. Can a freighter fake having to be towed out of hyper and emerge far out system towing another freighter when the desron arrives? Both freighters quickly dumping out g-torps?

Question. Can a sensor ghost be hidden inside a freighter’s impeller signal way out system?

Since the GA has no hard copies on spider drives and sensor ghosts, it seems as if several spider drives can make an insertion together. Several ships can scatter in opposite direction while the one ship is detected hypering out. So many tactics are available to the MAN.

And consider if Honor's doppelganger is at the helm of raider squadrons. In her infancy.

P.S. When hyper raiders are hypering in and out annoying a system, they can detach g-torps every time.

Why call hyper raiders missile boats when they hardly carry any missiles? Hyper raiders want to sucker punch in hyper, and remain unseen and leave no evidence if possible. For as long as possible. I am imagining ships suited for hyper warfare and not hyper combat. No combat. They kill virtually unseen.

They might can be configured to carry missiles when re-tasked. But when raiding hyper would they need missiles if they can spin a web and drop mines? Or wait to use a powerful graser. Unless you are imagining purpose built raiders with the appropriate tubes.

Can two or more raiders tow pods simultaneously? Like a formation of Blue Angels flying in a tight formation towing pods. Spider drive tractors are powerful and it might be possible to retask one or more of them for towing. They don't need to hyper in carrying any velocity.

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If you want to play mind games with things like G-torps and you want to screw with interstellar shipping you don't have to play tag with anybody's DDs.
Part of the beauty of the LD's is that they are effectively invisible and are going to translate from hyper beyond the normal range of a less than Manticore or Erwhon or Grayson. You want to destroy hyper capable transports and freighters but- based upon what was done in Oyster Bay- the higher goal is to destroy orbital infrastructure and fabrication. The Alignment still has the Sharks, it still has the original Ghost scouts and we should probably presume that Ghosts are still in production to provide the detailed targeting information that the LD's would need to deploy the payloads against any given systems.
So, depending on how many G-torps a Shark can carry on external hard points and how many they might be able to carry in cargo spaces (to reload the exterior hard points between mission segments) you can send out Shark / Ghost pairs for scouting systems and then wait till a freighter arrives to make deliveriy and pickups of goods to the main station of an insutrialized system. Station orbits are simple to calculate with enough observations. There should be plenty of time- given the Shark is in the right position--to put a G-torp where it can destroy the freighter and the station. You can get the readings of where the fusion reactor(s) are on the station and on the freighter. What is the likelihood that there is an Astro-control type tug that can handle the debris of the freighter and station fragments that will be dropping into the gravity well of the planet they are orbiting. Might even be made to look like the freighter was the cause of the catastrophe and got caught in it.
Same idea but go for the Astro Control and one or more warehousing/servicng station & /or military facility at a wormhole bridge terminus. You are killing experienced & specialized crew (and probably more than one team on the Control station) and destroying that (with all that historic traffic and wormhole information) and destroying the cargo o along with support/warehouse station.
Who's to blame? These are things that can cripple a system and certainly disrupt trade. Create havoc, kill experienced spacers with critical jobs then slip away to do again elsewhere as long as your have f g-torps to use from stealth.
Very in keeping with the Alignment's preferred methods of operations.

Brigade XO wrote:Might even be made to look like the freighter was the cause of the catastrophe and got caught in it.

I do not fault your choice of targets; but a kill by a G-torpedo cannot be made to look as though the freighter was the cause, because there is that nasty explosion when the graser self-destructs. Anyone recording from outside will see the freighter being cut open before the reactor failure. The Grand Alliance already has enough of these recordings to be able identify the method and with the capture of Galton be familiar with the weapon (but not the method of transportation). If they are close enough, they might even get a picture of the spider drive.

penny wrote:Hyper raiders are not meant to engage warships in the open before a full-scale invasion, or until war has begun. Hyper raiders do not want to be seen while the hyper raiding phase is going down.

I agree, they're no meant to.

But there will be a ready squadron of destroyers in a Tier 1 or Tier 2 system that will come to investigate, so they have to get past those first. The best tactic we've discussed so far to get the destroyers to give up looking for an insertion is to have something be detected and be seen leave. And it has to be believable and it has to contend with a CO that didn't just want to "be thorough" or "go by the book" and keep the GRs scanning for a bit longer.

They can always abort if that happens to save themselves, but the mission is over. If you start getting multiple, unexplained hyper emergences, someone is going to wonder what is happening. They may guess wrong, but is the MAN counting on this?

There's also an issue of timing: the next RMN DB is going to carry the stats to the regional capital and thence to Manticore. So with a round-trip time of about a month, every system will know that there are unexplained hyper emergences in several systems, at which point everyone is going to remember the Yawata Strike. So this strategy may work in some systems, for about a month.

Is it worth building ships for this?

Dunno how my tactic got to be bassackwards. I am responding to someone saying that hyper raiders will be chased and followed into hyper. I don't think that is a good idea, says the spider to the fly.

That was me and I said that before you suggested that no one needs to see a transition upwards, only the loss of a contact. However, I remain unconvinced that a translation in any direction is always undetectable from short distances. The hyper generator consumes a lot of energy and must be producing some gravitic effects. So a nearby GR may see the translation, and thus a chase start. So the MAN has to take into account that its hyper-raider is raided in hyper.

Either way, the original proposal wasn't about a chase in hyperspace, but that the ready squadron or the next-ready one would follow to the next hyper emergence. If the hyper-raider can't insert the first time, there's no reason to believe it can on the second.

I realized late that you guys are talking about the desron possibly hypering in close enough to detect the raiders. I didn't think about that. But now that I am, the raiders should leave their generators ready. If they are at the far edge of the hyper limit, why should they worry about betraying emissions? They are not there to engage. Hyper out if the enemy gets too close for comfort. Rinse. Repeat. That is what ships traditionally do anyway when antagonizing systems, no?

The chance that the desron emerges close enough to detection is low. But not zero, so you're right, the hyper-raiders should leave their generators ready and bug out if there's a decent chance of detection. But see above for the discussion about a second insertion not being any better, possibly being much worse because now everyone knows someone is trying to be sneaky.

All you're doing now is keeping the system at a high state of alert. Which has value of itself: tiring the enemy.

But if a hyper raider can lure a desron into hyper after mine layers have laid their stealthy g-torps, they can lead a desron right into hell. That is how Courvosier was killed in n-space. The tactic should work even better in hyper.

Can you elaborate?

There has to be something very dangerous about an enemy that can set up a base right in your attic out of your reach in a higher hyper band. But close enough to resupply ships very quickly.

Assuming a recharge time of 15 minutes, that's 2 hours away, then 2 hours back, unless you want to do a crash translation down and light up the entire sky and set off every gravitic sensor in the system. Not bad, but not really that close.

And as I said, not necessarily out of reach. The ready squadron may not have streak drives, but the RMN detachment (or RHN or IAN in their polities) will likely have them. So if it is possible to follow through hyper, then that resupply collier is not exactly safe.

And if it isn't possible to follow past a translation, then there is no hyper-raiding.

Question. Where is the ready squadron hypering in from???

From somewhere close to and outside of the hyperlimit. The whole idea is that they can respond readily, so they mustn't be two hours away under impeller drive from doing so.

Question. How many g-torps can a freighter hold?

Unknown. The freighter that deployed the Silver Bullets didn't carry that many of them, but the SBs were larger. The torpedoes are about twice the size of an RMN missile and an SD(P) has several thousand of those aboard, and in pods. So the answer should be "at least a thousand."

But the Sharks were 4 million tonnes and said to only be able to carry the torpedoes externally. The previous paragraph would conclude a Shark should have been able carry at least a couple hundred torpedoes, not a half-dozen. So there's a discrepancy in the data here. That would instead say the torpedoes are as big as a destroyer, which is also its own kind of nonsense.

Maybe there's something specific about the Sharks (and presumably of the spider drive) that made it unable to carry torpedoes internally.

Question. Can a freighter fake having to be towed out of hyper and emerge far out system towing another freighter when the desron arrives? Both freighters quickly dumping out g-torps?

No. I mean, the field does extend far enough that it could be done, but it's a very delicate operation and you wouldn't do it yourself. So it's not believable that a freighter would attempt to do that instead of just continuing onwards to the system and then calling for help. The end result would be that you're a couple of light-hours out.

Question. Can a sensor ghost be hidden inside a freighter’s impeller signal way out system?

The question doesn't make much sense. Assuming it's the scenario where the ready desron came to investigate, they will approach the freighter and scan it, so trying to hide a sensor ghost at the spot where all sensors are focusing on is not a good plan.

But if you didn't mean the scenario where they emerged far out, then yes. It's exactly what was done to insert the Silver Bullets in the Sigma Draconis system. There's no reason to believe that wouldn't work for something smaller than the SBs. Or actual SBs.

Since the GA has no hard copies on spider drives and sensor ghosts, it seems as if several spider drives can make an insertion together. Several ships can scatter in opposite direction while the one ship is detected hypering out. So many tactics are available to the MAN.

The RMN has copies of sensor records of those sensor ghosts. They clearly didn't know what they were seeing at the time and there's no reason to believe they have improved on the detection, but you can bet that the sensor suites are now programmed to alarm if those particular ghosts are detected again.

Anyway, see above on this tactic.

P.S. When hyper raiders are hypering in and out annoying a system, they can detach g-torps every time.

As I said above, by the second emergence the system's defence forces are on alert. On the third, they've declared Case Zulu and told civilian traffic to scatter, while bringing up Mycroft to ready mode and deploying Ghost Riders.

Why call hyper raiders missile boats when they hardly carry any missiles?

Because we were discussing a different type of ship, not the hyper-raiders, as the discussion progressed from the insertion of a raider. At that point, you called for a different ship, one that can launch torpedoes. If they are going to launch torpedoes at warships, they are torpedo boats, not hyper-raiders.

Can two or more raiders tow pods simultaneously? Like a formation of Blue Angels flying in a tight formation towing pods. Spider drive tractors are powerful and it might be possible to retask one or more of them for towing. They don't need to hyper in carrying any velocity.

I don't see a problem in a cruiser-sized ship towing a pod or a torpedo by itself, using regular tractors. There's no need to involve the spider or pulling from two ships.

Provided that the thing they're doing is not a significant fraction of their own mass, that is. See above on the problem with torpedoes being twice the size of an MDM, but the Sharks not being able to carry a lot of them.

Though one reason may have been the need for stealth insertion. If you need to translate with pods out at the end of your tractors, your translation is probably going to be sloppy and not resemble at all that of a freighter.

Brigade XO wrote: Same idea but go for the Astro Control and one or more warehousing/servicng station & /or military facility at a wormhole bridge terminus. You are killing experienced & specialized crew (and probably more than one team on the Control station) and destroying that (with all that historic traffic and wormhole information) and destroying the cargo o along with support/warehouse station.
Who's to blame? These are things that can cripple a system and certainly disrupt trade. Create havoc, kill experienced spacers with critical jobs then slip away to do again elsewhere as long as your have f g-torps to use from stealth.
Very in keeping with the Alignment's preferred methods of operations.

Might as well resort to pure terrorism. Put some bombs in the mail in that freighter programmed to go off an hour after it strikes its wedge. One presumes that in shipping within the Talbott or Silesia Quadrants is subject to less scrutiny and fewer inspections than imports from outside the SEM.

Or don't use a timer. Use a nanite-programmed compulsion on the quartermaster. Whom you've had to kidnap anyway, because you needed them to load the bomb aboard and erase the records of it, so you did some memory editing to make them forget they'd done that.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Question. How many g-torps can a freighter hold?

Unknown. The freighter that deployed the Silver Bullets didn't carry that many of them, but the SBs were larger. The torpedoes are about twice the size of an RMN missile and an SD(P) has several thousand of those aboard, and in pods. So the answer should be "at least a thousand."

But the Sharks were 4 million tonnes and said to only be able to carry the torpedoes externally. The previous paragraph would conclude a Shark should have been able carry at least a couple hundred torpedoes, not a half-dozen. So there's a discrepancy in the data here. That would instead say the torpedoes are as big as a destroyer, which is also its own kind of nonsense.

For G-torps on Sharks it does seem like a 4 Mton ship should have room for oversize launch tubes for something even twice as big as a Mk23. Though I'm guessing that this meant twice the exterior dimensions; not just twice the volume.

But its possible that the g-torp wasn't finalized until after the test-bed Sharks were designed and laid down; or possibly not even until after they were built. And it must not have seemed a major priority to do massive overhauls to squeeze in oversize missile tubes and handling equipment into ships that weren't ever supposed to be used beyond testing and wargames.

Now the Sharks do have pod bays for all the Cataphracts they carried; but I could easily see there being some critical dimension that prevented those from fitting pods that could hold a weapon that's significantly longer than the missiles the original pod dimensions were based around. (If all the pods have to travel at some point through an elevator, or curved track, then a longer pod wouldn't fit)

Still, that doesn't explain why they couldn't carry many more externally.


So 'almost twice the size of a Mk23' just seems too small compared to the difficulties they've talked about with them. Without that line I'd have guessed maybe 40-60% the size of a Shrike. (Which wouldn't have sounded insane; as they also carry a large, if not as large, energy mount plus a very volume intensive drive system, and a lot of volume of plasma capacitors - though don't need space for crew, missiles, or CMs)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Might as well resort to pure terrorism. Put some bombs in the mail in that freighter programmed to go off an hour after it strikes its wedge. One presumes that in shipping within the Talbott or Silesia Quadrants is subject to less scrutiny and fewer inspections than imports from outside the SEM.

Or don't use a timer. Use a nanite-programmed compulsion on the quartermaster. Whom you've had to kidnap anyway, because you needed them to load the bomb aboard and erase the records of it, so you did some memory editing to make them forget they'd done that.

The authorities still do not know what form the bombs had that destroyed the Beowulf orbitals, unless that information was found at Galton. Make a batch of similar bombs that would fit in small shipping containers and resemble laboratory gear to an X-ray examination. Slip them into regular freight traffic and ship them to research facilities, then cause them to explode on opening. Include others that explode when they are handled after unloading from a ship (only one bomb per ship).