Honorverse ramblings and musings

Something occurred to me. Perhaps you military types can shed a little light on this.

For sake of argument. Let's say that the GA has just perfected the latest toys from Bolthole. Let's say the talk amongst all of the officers sporting the proper clearance is the new Achilles system. The latest intelligence on missile technology puts this at a system that operates in tandem or separate from Apollo.

Now this is a very hush hush system. For Your Eyes Only.

Exactly whose eyes would that be?

Harrington would know first hand, for certain. Hamish. Who else would be considered an immediate need to know, in all three Alliance Navies?

Any help?

When Honor was a Commodore, driving Fearless would she have necessarily been told about Apollo, immediately?

Who would get the latest scoop on technology immediately?

cthia wrote:Something occurred to me. Perhaps you military types can shed a little light on this.

For sake of argument. Let's say that the GA has just perfected the latest toys from Bolthole. Let's say the talk amongst all of the officers sporting the proper clearance is the new Achilles system. The latest intelligence on missile technology puts this at a system that operates in tandem or separate from Apollo.

Now this is a very hush hush system. For Your Eyes Only.

Exactly whose eyes would that be?

Harrington would know first hand, for certain. Hamish. Who else would be considered an immediate need to know, in all three Alliance Navies?

Any help?

When Honor was a Commodore, driving Fearless would she have necessarily been told about Apollo, immediately?

Who would get the latest scoop on technology immediately?

At an absolute minimum, Thomas Theisman, Shannon Foraker, Sonja Hemphill, High Admiral Judah Yakanov.

Plus any fleet, task force and division commanders, captains, XOs, tactical officers, chief petty officers and ratings of units using the new technology. Not everyone would have every bit of information on the new system, just what was necessary to use/maintain it as part of their job.

Note: Honor as a Commodore did not have CL Fearless (rank was Commander) or CA Fearless (rank was Captain of the List). And as a Commodore, she was a flag officer--which do not drive--Flag Officers are passengers of the ship they fly their flag from.

cthia wrote:Who would get the latest scoop on technology immediately?

I'd guess BuWeaps is pretty compartmentalized so only the senior people know a lot about anything other than 'their' projects and what's directly related to them, but obviously the people actually doing the R&D would know about new tech first. Followed by the people tasked with turning R&D products into mass-produced hardware, and those tasked with developing doctrine for how to uses the new stuff. But I'd guess line officers usually wouldn't learn about new tech until
1) they could possibly use it (i.e. their ship, one under their command has the new tech, or one they expect to be under their command soon has the new tech) or be directly affected by its use
2) it's used in a large-scale/very public operation so 'everyone' knows it exists (if not the technical details)
3) if new tech was developed and widely deployed in peacetime, it could possibly end up something that everyone in, say, the RMN, knows about but no one in a non-allied force does

It depends on what phase of development the technology is. I would actually say that Honor would not be on the Need To Know list unless the technology was about to be deployed. If it was about to be deployed, then a whole lot of people need to know. But if it has not reached that stage, then I would say it would be limited almost entirely to the researchers working on it, the top echelons of BuWeaps, the top echelons of BuShips (because it almost certainly affects ship development), and the Lords of the Admiralty. No one else needs to know until it is ready to be deployed.

SWM wrote:It depends on what phase of development the technology is. I would actually say that Honor would not be on the Need To Know list unless the technology was about to be deployed. If it was about to be deployed, then a whole lot of people need to know. But if it has not reached that stage, then I would say it would be limited almost entirely to the researchers working on it, the top echelons of BuWeaps, the top echelons of BuShips (because it almost certainly affects ship development), and the Lords of the Admiralty. No one else needs to know until it is ready to be deployed.

I considered that Honor may not be on the need to know list as well. But I quickly dismissed it.

I felt the need to consider the actual war effort. For instance, when Hamish was getting his head handed to him at Trevor's Star by McQueen. I would imagine that he'd be told, if only to keep up morale, despite the asskicking he was presently getting, that things look better over the horizon.

Same for Harrington, who, it seems, was always going on the offensive with 25 % of the required order of battle.

Seems also, there'd be a need to begin pondering the manifold shift in tactical thinking, and how to best use the new systems - therefore certain officers would be given a heads-up and a leg-up. Especially with an attritional war fought with a numerically superior opponent as Haven was.

But perhaps you're right after all. That's why I ask you military types.

Perhaps this is why Sonja was short on the friend's list. She didn't have to worry about prematurely divulging secrets if she didn't socialize.

cthia wrote:

SWM wrote:It depends on what phase of development the technology is. I would actually say that Honor would not be on the Need To Know list unless the technology was about to be deployed. If it was about to be deployed, then a whole lot of people need to know. But if it has not reached that stage, then I would say it would be limited almost entirely to the researchers working on it, the top echelons of BuWeaps, the top echelons of BuShips (because it almost certainly affects ship development), and the Lords of the Admiralty. No one else needs to know until it is ready to be deployed.

I considered that Honor may not be on the need to know list as well. But I quickly dismissed it.

I felt the need to consider the actual war effort. For instance, when Hamish was getting his head handed to him at Trevor's Star by McQueen. I would imagine that he'd be told, if only to keep up morale, despite the asskicking he was presently getting, that things look better over the horizon.

Same for Harrington, who, it seems, was always going on the offensive with 25 % of the required order of battle.

Seems also, there'd be a need to begin pondering the manifold shift in tactical thinking, and how to best use the new systems - therefore certain officers would be given a heads-up and a leg-up. Especially with an attritional war fought with a numerically superior opponent as Haven was.

But perhaps you're right after all. That's why I ask you military types.

Perhaps this is why Sonja was short on the friend's list. She didn't have to worry about prematurely divulging secrets if she didn't socialize.

I would think that the members of the WDB would also have to know, if only to crank its capabilities into planning for the next generation of weapons.

There is a huge chain of changes needed to deploy a really different weapon. For example, Apollo required kh2, which required very significant changes to ships, which delayed the availability of new shops that were needed really badly today. So while a lot of the people building the ships don't need to know the details, you needed to get approval at a very high level to make those changes. So they need to be convinced that this will work. You also need to do the training for these ships, and the obvious point to do this is when you start doing the KH2 mods. Since kh2 requires some sort of dedicated tactical section they need to be trained, the regular tactical and command crew need to be trained, the techs who are supposed to manage, maintain and repair the systems need to trained, etc.

It's a huge undertaking, with probably many thousands of RMN, GSN and AIN members needing to know at least some of the classified details about the system, plus the people involved in production and install.

fallsfromtrees wrote:I would think that the members of the WDB would also have to know, if only to crank its capabilities into planning for the next generation of weapons.

The Weapons Development Board counts as among the people developing the weapon (hence the name of the board).

With my up-front caveat... I hope they don't name it the Achilles system... Sorta ended badly for the hero in question and quite a few ships with that name over the ages have not necessarily fared well either.

Probably the best example we have from RFC is how used the HMS Minotaur in Echoes of Honor, where a huge amount of the LAC and ghost-rider testbed development took place, off in an area where "the enemy" can't see what you are doing. For now I'd presume that once Hemphill and Foraker get together, they'd come up with some truly remarkable cross weapons systems "fertilizations", to be further developed at Bolthole.

Likely the unholy trinity of the Harrington, Jaruwalski, and Bellefeuille and their tactical minions would have fun duking it out in sims to work out the pre-production kinks, and then in real-space with prototype ships while the rest of the new systems go into mass ship/weapons production/upgrading, etc.,
then prepared for command handoff to the admirals and commodores who are going to be using the systems in battle.

Poisonally... (personally pronounced badly but intentionally... aka poisonous to the evil overlords of the universe), and grafting in from the POV threads. Wouldn't you just love to put a camera on their faces when the next big tactical wrinkle makes it's appearance on the Honorverse stage?

SharkHunter wrote:With my up-front caveat... I hope they don't name it the Achilles system... Sorta ended badly for the hero in question and quite a few ships with that name over the ages have not necessarily fared well either.

Probably the best example we have from RFC is how used the HMS Minotaur in Echoes of Honor, where a huge amount of the LAC and ghost-rider testbed development took place, off in an area where "the enemy" can't see what you are doing. For now I'd presume that once Hemphill and Foraker get together, they'd come up with some truly remarkable cross weapons systems "fertilizations", to be further developed at Bolthole.

Likely the unholy trinity of the Harrington, Jaruwalski, and Bellefeuille and their tactical minions would have fun duking it out in sims to work out the pre-production kinks, and then in real-space with prototype ships while the rest of the new systems go into mass ship/weapons production/upgrading, etc.,
then prepared for command handoff to the admirals and commodores who are going to be using the systems in battle.

Poisonally... (personally pronounced badly but intentionally... aka poisonous to the evil overlords of the universe), and grafting in from the POV threads. Wouldn't you just love to put a camera on their faces when the next big tactical wrinkle makes it's appearance on the Honorverse stage?

What?! No Achilles?

With Honor's dressing down of the WDB, it seems that they'd allow the best tactical thinkers in-on the latest R&D direction. If not for the sole purpose of saving wasted time on useless systems. If they'd've asked Honor 'bout the grav lance she'd've shown them where to shove it.

Perhaps a few more people should be allowed in-on the process even now, it seems, then the A-10 Warthog abortion would've been ... aborted? (shrugs shoulders)