Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:With nothing going on by way of battles, does that mean Abigail will not gain rank? No wars, no fast promotions?

Is Henke the only one having fun right now?

Abigail's career will move along quite nicely. She has so many Rabbi's it's not even funny. Let's see in the RMN she has COMDR Terikhov RADM Overstigeen and FADM Alexander-Harrington. Then in the GSN she has HADM Yanakov and ADM Alexander-Harrington. Not only that she has dear ole Dad Steadholder Owens.

n7axw wrote:We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

The fact that someone has worked for decades to corrupt the leadership and deliberately place people who were at most semi-competent in positions of authority helped.

However, I will point out that the US Navy prior to December 8, 1941 really neither knew or cared what the capabilities of the IJN were.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

The fact that someone has worked for decades to corrupt the leadership and deliberately place people who were at most semi-competent in positions of authority helped.

However, I will point out that the US Navy prior to December 8, 1941 really neither knew or cared what the capabilities of the IJN were.

The USN did care its just that they US as a whole suffered from a bad case of myopia and a lack of Japanese speakers and writers who weren't Isai and nesai. IIRC there were only about 100-125 total.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

The fact that someone has worked for decades to corrupt the leadership and deliberately place people who were at most semi-competent in positions of authority helped.

However, I will point out that the US Navy prior to December 8, 1941 really neither knew or cared what the capabilities of the IJN were.

Or for that matter, what the the German naval U-boats could do. And what the correct countermeasures were, as well as the unwillingness to implement them, due to the arrogance of its senior leadership.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

The fact that someone has worked for decades to corrupt the leadership and deliberately place people who were at most semi-competent in positions of authority helped.

However, I will point out that the US Navy prior to December 8, 1941 really neither knew or cared what the capabilities of the IJN were.

Hi kzt,

I wholeheartedly agree with your first paragraph.

Your second one is a bit of a mischaracterization however. The US navy did know and care about what was going on with Japan. It had intelligence, abeit not the latest intelligence, about what the imperial navy was up to. In short, the threat was noted although it can be said with fair criticism that the full scope of that threat was not fully understood.

The biggest problem that hindered the situation prior to Pearl
Harbor was isolationism at home which delayed gearing up for the threat soon enough to prevent the damage the Japanese were able to inflict.

Don

n7axw wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Halo is not bad. It's a reasonable and effective response to the state of the art of 15-20 years back. The idea of it may play some small part in the next generation of Grand Alliance decoy/ECM systems - 5% to 10%, if these could be quantified.

If they had the time, and could shake off the dust of centuries of accumulated bad habits, the SLN could enjoy the benefits of the greatest tech base and economy and re-invent itself as a true nightmare. But they don't have the time, and that is so very much dust.

We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

Don

Yeah and those who actually paid attention to the reports from System Defense force observers sent to Haven sector were ostracized. The System Defense forces which use native ship designs rather then left over League Navy issue ships are IMO much more dangerous then the main League fleet but I don't think most of them have the hardware to be more then a minor annoyance to the GA, and certainly not the numbers.

cthia wrote:It has been mentioned, that with podlayers, there is no more need to limpet pods to the hull. Just call me a Hamish-like holdout for the days of yore. I like the idea of limpeted pods and a massive initial volley. Why can't really huge missiles be limpeted?

Question.

Could two missiles be mated together achieving even higher acceleration (sort of a twin turbo thing?) It would offer a greater radar signature to the opponent, then at the proper time, separate - confusing the hell out of opposing Tac-Ops. They'd be massive duos but they could be limpeted. Just a twist on an existing theme.

Would that place the wedges too close?

Yeah, I'm afraid that having the impeller drives a few meters apart puts the wedges too close.

n7axw wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Halo is not bad. It's a reasonable and effective response to the state of the art of 15-20 years back. The idea of it may play some small part in the next generation of Grand Alliance decoy/ECM systems - 5% to 10%, if these could be quantified.

If they had the time, and could shake off the dust of centuries of accumulated bad habits, the SLN could enjoy the benefits of the greatest tech base and economy and re-invent itself as a true nightmare. But they don't have the time, and that is so very much dust.

We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

Don

The SLN was guilty of both - flying blind and going off half-cocked.

But the thing is, the League didn't produce anything worthwhile in so many centuries. Talk about resting on your laurels. The only worthwhile tech came from Technodyne, and now Technodyne has gone belly up.

What I was awaiting from the SLN, in the back of my mind, was a surprise unleashing of their Echo system - revisited and upgraded. That would have been the major surprise.

wiki wrote:The Echo system was a form of stealth technology developed in the Solarian League.

The system tied in a spacecraft's passive sensors with its own active sensors and communications array so that when a wave packet struck the hull and started back, the ship's own active sensors sent out a perfectly matched packet that was shifted a hundred eighty degrees out of phase, thus cloaking the vessel.
Charles tried to sell it to the People's Republic of Haven in the early 1910s PD. (HHA5.2: AAoW)

cthia wrote:But the thing is, the League didn't produce anything worthwhile in so many centuries. Talk about resting on your laurels. The only worthwhile tech came from Technodyne, and now Technodyne has gone belly up.

That's a bit of an overstatement. Nobody had come up with anything really new in interstellar warfare for centuries. There were plenty of advances in other areas, but warfare was pretty much at a static point. You can't really blame the Solarian League when it was true across the entire galaxy.

You have to remember that even in 1922 P.D., the laser head is less than 90 years old, and has been in general distribution for only a little over 50 years. No major battles had yet taken place anywhere with laserheads until the Havenite wars. And the Solarian League only replaces or refits ships on a 100 year schedule. Since warfare had been static for several hundred years, it is not that surprising that almost no one recognized the tidal change represented by the laser head. War and preparations for war are huge incentives for military innovations, and the galaxy had largely been at peace for half a millennium.

Yes, the SLN failed to notice things in the last couple decades that it should have. But it is a bit of a stretch to blame them for not changing things for the previous several centuries.

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:But the thing is, the League didn't produce anything worthwhile in so many centuries. Talk about resting on your laurels. The only worthwhile tech came from Technodyne, and now Technodyne has gone belly up.

That's a bit of an overstatement. Nobody had come up with anything really new in interstellar warfare for centuries. There were plenty of advances in other areas, but warfare was pretty much at a static point. You can't really blame the Solarian League when it was true across the entire galaxy.

You have to remember that even in 1922 P.D., the laser head is less than 90 years old, and has been in general distribution for only a little over 50 years. No major battles had yet taken place anywhere with laserheads until the Havenite wars. And the Solarian League only replaces or refits ships on a 100 year schedule. Since warfare had been static for several hundred years, it is not that surprising that almost no one recognized the tidal change represented by the laser head. War and preparations for war are huge incentives for military innovations, and the galaxy had largely been at peace for half a millennium.

Yes, the SLN failed to notice things in the last couple decades that it should have. But it is a bit of a stretch to blame them for not changing things for the previous several centuries.

I certainly see your point. But I don't know. I'm a bit resistant to letting them off the hook so easily. I never imagined the League moving ahead of the warfare game by following what everyone else was doing. I imagined them to be the innovators. Several centuries that they could have set the precedent. We all know and have discussed their R&D might. It's gargantuan. And the League doesn't suffer the education leak that the Havenites bear. The laserhead should have been League designed long before anyone else. IMO

Now I know the argument. "Necessity is the mother of invention." The League didn't feel that it was necessary to continue reinventing themselves. In retrospect we see that that was wrong, so too does the League, now.

I'm just not quite so sure that they should be let off the hook so easily for their slackness. It's as if the US would stop innovating militarily if peace broke out in its areas of concern for several decades, or even centuries. I often think about that and I'd wager we'd still be paying $100 for a band-aid to fund covert military R&D.

It's just inexcusable to think you can remain top-dog without continuing to eat your Alpo. Inexcusable and a bit unrealistic. IMO. Especially since they were in the business of negotiating by browbeating and shoving missiles up the ass of most everyone in God's creation.

If you're driving a Vector your mileage will vary... and vary... and vary...