Honorverse ramblings and musings

n7axw wrote:

cthia wrote: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...

I think that the point is that the League wasn't pressing ahead with military R&D. There undoubtedly was R&D going on in other areas even as there was on Manticore whose overall tech was roughly comparable to the League's core worlds.

In the Leagues defense, not only the League, but everybody else believed that the League was too big for anyone else to tackle. Its military was so huge it could swamp any conceivable opponent. So there was no sense of being threatened at all. In addition to that, there was a vested institutional interest against innovation. After all, if the tech changes too drasticly, all of that hardware becomes obsolete and has to be replaced. If what you have seems adequate to the task at hand, that can sound wasteful.

Manticore, on the other hand, crowded ahead with pressurized military R&D because from the time of Roger on, a period of about 50 years, her leadership was very much aware of a deep threat to her long term existence. If Manticore was to survive against the Peeps, she had to produce not only a better trained navy, but a navy whose equipment was qualitatively and technololgically superior to the point where it could stand up to the quantatative superiority that the Peeps could bring to the table. What made Manticore's R&D pressurized was the urgency of survival.

I don't fault the League for its faulure to do military R&D nearly so much as I do for its failure to keep track of the threat level. There had been a war going out in the Haven sector for almost 20 years and between simply not paying attention and actively supressing reports of what was going on, there was a massive intelligence failure; so massive that the League was completey blindsided before the SLN even became aware that there was a threat.

The reasons for this have been frequently discussed in this forum. But here you have the core of what happened.

Don

Theemile wrote: Let's not confure engineering Prowess for Innovation. One can have the best engineered product out there without innovating a new idea - and that is the SLN. In one of the battle sequences, the SLN command crew is watching in awe as the wave of Manty missiles comes at them and one of the Staff metions that despite their advantages, the attack missile delta V is ~3000m/s LOWER than the current SLN missile, making intercept vectors more...predictable. (of course the ECM kicked in moments later and that went out the airlock).

So the impellers in a SLN missile produce better accel than an RMN missile. The PDCLs may have a few dozen meters more reach, and their CMs may be designed to be no less effective than their predecessor, but are 500% more reliable.

Bill Woods wrote:

Theemile wrote: Let's not confure engineering Prowess for Innovation. One can have the best engineered product out there without innovating a new idea - and that is the SLN. In one of the battle sequences, the SLN command crew is watching in awe as the wave of Manty missiles comes at them and one of the Staff metions that despite their advantages, the attack missile delta V is ~3000m/s LOWER than the current SLN missile, making intercept vectors more...predictable. (of course the ECM kicked in moments later and that went out the airlock).

So the impellers in a SLN missile produce better accel than an RMN missile. The PDCLs may have a few dozen meters more reach, and their CMs may be designed to be no less effective than their predecessor, but are 500% more reliable.

Mm, no. The guy's point was that the missiles have been accelerating so long at 46k gravities (= 451 km/s2) that they'll be coming in at such incredible speed ("better than 180,500 [km/s]") that they'd close from CM range to target "in only eight seconds". In which time, they could change their velocity by less than 2000 km/s. A Javelin could dodge more because -- going slower -- it'd have more time to do it.

From a standing start, a Javelin could accelerate at (46k + 1600) gravities (=467 km/s2) for three minutes, reaching 81 Mm/s and a powered range of 7.4 Gm.
The M16s can accelerate 451 km/s2 for at least 5.9 minutes, reaching 141 Mm/s at 26.5 Gm.

cthia wrote:

n7axw wrote:I think that the point is that the League wasn't pressing ahead with military R&D. There undoubtedly was R&D going on in other areas even as there was on Manticore whose overall tech was roughly comparable to the League's core worlds.

In the Leagues defense, not only the League, but everybody else believed that the League was too big for anyone else to tackle. Its military was so huge it could swamp any conceivable opponent. So there was no sense of being threatened at all. In addition to that, there was a vested institutional interest against innovation. After all, if the tech changes too drasticly, all of that hardware becomes obsolete and has to be replaced. If what you have seems adequate to the task at hand, that can sound wasteful.

Manticore, on the other hand, crowded ahead with pressurized military R&D because from the time of Roger on, a period of about 50 years, her leadership was very much aware of a deep threat to her long term existence. If Manticore was to survive against the Peeps, she had to produce not only a better trained navy, but a navy whose equipment was qualitatively and technololgically superior to the point where it could stand up to the quantatative superiority that the Peeps could bring to the table. What made Manticore's R&D pressurized was the urgency of survival.

I don't fault the League for its faulure to do military R&D nearly so much as I do for its failure to keep track of the threat level. There had been a war going out in the Haven sector for almost 20 years and between simply not paying attention and actively supressing reports of what was going on, there was a massive intelligence failure; so massive that the League was completey blindsided before the SLN even became aware that there was a threat.

The reasons for this have been frequently discussed in this forum. But here you have the core of what happened.

Don

Nice post.


****** *


I suppose that what is so seemingly unrealistic to me, is that all separate entities failed. Isn't the military compartmentalized, even within branches? It's as if someone in the Haven sector can develop the threat level equivalent of the atomic bomb and the League remain completely oblivious to it. Space is big, really big, I know. But so too is the grapevine. How could all entities of the League constantly ignore these wild reports of Haven sector super weapons? Especially when elements of the grapevine consisted of the League's own officers - either retired, drummed out or currently on half-pay - who were either vacationing in or operating freighters in the Haven sector when hostilities and subsequent battles broke out.

It's as if Old Earth, even bracketing the entire League itself, had become a "radio-free" entity. Remembering radio-free Europe.

.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Bill Woods wrote:Mm, no. The guy's point was that the missiles have been accelerating so long at 46k gravities (= 451 km/s2) that they'll be coming in at such incredible speed ("better than 180,500 [km/s]") that they'd close from CM range to target "in only eight seconds". In which time, they could change their velocity by less than 2000 km/s. A Javelin could dodge more because -- going slower -- it'd have more time to do it.

From a standing start, a Javelin could accelerate at (46k + 1600) gravities (=467 km/s2) for three minutes, reaching 81 Mm/s and a powered range of 7.4 Gm.
The M16s can accelerate 451 km/s2 for at least 5.9 minutes, reaching 141 Mm/s at 26.5 Gm.

cthia wrote:

n7axw wrote:I think that the point is that the League wasn't pressing ahead with military R&D. There undoubtedly was R&D going on in other areas even as there was on Manticore whose overall tech was roughly comparable to the League's core worlds.

In the Leagues defense, not only the League, but everybody else believed that the League was too big for anyone else to tackle. Its military was so huge it could swamp any conceivable opponent. So there was no sense of being threatened at all. In addition to that, there was a vested institutional interest against innovation. After all, if the tech changes too drasticly, all of that hardware becomes obsolete and has to be replaced. If what you have seems adequate to the task at hand, that can sound wasteful.

Manticore, on the other hand, crowded ahead with pressurized military R&D because from the time of Roger on, a period of about 50 years, her leadership was very much aware of a deep threat to her long term existence. If Manticore was to survive against the Peeps, she had to produce not only a better trained navy, but a navy whose equipment was qualitatively and technololgically superior to the point where it could stand up to the quantatative superiority that the Peeps could bring to the table. What made Manticore's R&D pressurized was the urgency of survival.

I don't fault the League for its faulure to do military R&D nearly so much as I do for its failure to keep track of the threat level. There had been a war going out in the Haven sector for almost 20 years and between simply not paying attention and actively supressing reports of what was going on, there was a massive intelligence failure; so massive that the League was completey blindsided before the SLN even became aware that there was a threat.

The reasons for this have been frequently discussed in this forum. But here you have the core of what happened.

Don

Nice post.


****** *


I suppose that what is so seemingly unrealistic to me, is that all separate entities failed. Isn't the military compartmentalized, even within branches? It's as if someone in the Haven sector can develop the threat level equivalent of the atomic bomb and the League remain completely oblivious to it. Space is big, really big, I know. But so too is the grapevine. How could all entities of the League constantly ignore these wild reports of Haven sector super weapons? Especially when elements of the grapevine consisted of the League's own officers - either retired, drummed out or currently on half-pay - who were either vacationing in or operating freighters in the Haven sector when hostilities and subsequent battles broke out.

It's as if Old Earth, even bracketing the entire League itself, had become a "radio-free" entity. Remembering radio-free Europe.

.

SWM wrote:It wasn't all entities in the League military that failed. First of all, there's only one entity whose job is to pay attention to stuff like that--the Office of Naval Intelligence. And not every level of that department failed. There were quite a few reports about what was happening in the Haven Quadrant. It was the upper levels of the intelligence analysis division that tossed those reports aside.

Almost all of the failure of the League to recognize what was going on in the Havenite war can be traced to the administration level of one division of one department of the Navy. That was their job; everyone else in the SLN depended on the analysis provided by that division. There were certainly other failures elsewhere, but the prime blame can be laid there.

It almost makes one suspect that someone was manipulating things.

cthia wrote:Indeed.

However, I imagine that there were so many media reports, unassociated with MAlign controlled reporting, from all of the officer's involved in Haven sector observations. Consider, that these officer's mouths and minds would be agape.

...

"Did you see those phucking missile accelerations?!"

"Screw that! Did you see the number of missiles?!"

"And ships accel!," someone else chimes in.

After a while, how can public demands fueled by fear be silenced? These aren't reports of UFOs - which aren't exactly being silenced here on Earth despite our own MIBs. Mesans In Black.

And wouldn't independent news services want to check it out for themselves?



An aside:
Seems there'd be media ships, fast media ships with military grade sensors in the Honorverse - going where breaking news takes them.

cthia wrote:However, I imagine that there were so many media reports, unassociated with MAlign controlled reporting, from all of the officer's involved in Haven sector observations. Consider, that these officer's mouths and minds would be agape.

Storm From the Shadows
Chapter Forty-two wrote:Maitland Askew sat in his cramped, cubbyhole of a cabin aboard SLNS Restitution and worried. He'd been doing a lot of that over the last two or three weeks.

His exile to Restitution had been just as unpleasant as he'd anticipated. Admiral Sigbee had been distantly kind to him, although she'd also managed to make it clear (without saying so in so many words) that while she was prepared to do an old friend like Captain Mizawa a favor, she had no desire to get caught in the crossfire of any disputes between Mizawa and a Battle Fleet admiral. Askew wasn't even certain if she'd seen either of the memos he'd produced. He rather doubted that she would have told him, even if she had.
As far as the other officers on her staff—or assigned to Restitution's ship's company—were concerned, he must have screwed up in some truly monumental fashion to have been so summarily reassigned to his present duties. Captain Breshnikov, Restitution's CO, appeared to share that view of things, as well. That hurt, since Askew was aware that Adolf Breshnikov and Captain Mizawa had been friends for many years. Although Breshnikov hadn't gone out of his way to personally step on Askew, it was apparent that he took a particularly dim view of an officer who could so thoroughly have pissed off someone like Mizawa as to be kicked off of Mizawa's ship.

Yet bad as all that was, it wasn't the worst. No, the worst was the fact that he was the only person aboard Restitution who knew that the idiot wearing an admiral's uniform—the one who'd murdered the entire companies of three Manticoran destroyers in a fit of unreasoning panic—not only didn't know but didn't want to know just how nasty a surprise the Manties might have for him when they came sailing over the hyper limit with blood in their eyes.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:However, I imagine that there were so many media reports, unassociated with MAlign controlled reporting, from all of the officer's involved in Haven sector observations. Consider, that these officer's mouths and minds would be agape.

Storm From the Shadows
Chapter Forty-two wrote:Maitland Askew sat in his cramped, cubbyhole of a cabin aboard SLNS Restitution and worried. He'd been doing a lot of that over the last two or three weeks.

His exile to Restitution had been just as unpleasant as he'd anticipated. Admiral Sigbee had been distantly kind to him, although she'd also managed to make it clear (without saying so in so many words) that while she was prepared to do an old friend like Captain Mizawa a favor, she had no desire to get caught in the crossfire of any disputes between Mizawa and a Battle Fleet admiral. Askew wasn't even certain if she'd seen either of the memos he'd produced. He rather doubted that she would have told him, even if she had.
As far as the other officers on her staff—or assigned to Restitution's ship's company—were concerned, he must have screwed up in some truly monumental fashion to have been so summarily reassigned to his present duties. Captain Breshnikov, Restitution's CO, appeared to share that view of things, as well. That hurt, since Askew was aware that Adolf Breshnikov and Captain Mizawa had been friends for many years. Although Breshnikov hadn't gone out of his way to personally step on Askew, it was apparent that he took a particularly dim view of an officer who could so thoroughly have pissed off someone like Mizawa as to be kicked off of Mizawa's ship.

Yet bad as all that was, it wasn't the worst. No, the worst was the fact that he was the only person aboard Restitution who knew that the idiot wearing an admiral's uniform—the one who'd murdered the entire companies of three Manticoran destroyers in a fit of unreasoning panic—not only didn't know but didn't want to know just how nasty a surprise the Manties might have for him when they came sailing over the hyper limit with blood in their eyes.

Adm Byng and his staff are far from being the only SLN officers whose minds are incapable of being agape. The quoted passage is just a reminder of the fate of anyone who puts any credence in the "wild exaggerations" coming out of news media, SDF observers, and timid, defeatist Frontier Fleet analysts.

Chapter Forty-four -- the explication of Adm Byng's demise contains a whole host of examples of how SLN institutional arrogance leads to rationalizations to explain away capabilities the RMN is rubbing their nose in.