I haven’t read everything in this thread, and I have no intention of doing so. Partly because I’m at a convention which means that my schedule is a bit tighter than usual, partly because getting too far down into the weeds is likely to be less than the most productive use of my time
, and partly because I am so far behind in my writing schedule that getting into one of the mega-posts I’ve been occasionally twitted for doing would definitely not be the most productive use of my time.As I understand the proposal, it is that on a limited percentage of the Shrikes in a COLAC’s wing, a couple of the missile tubes should be deleted in favor of energy torpedoes which would then (presumably) be used to finish off ships which have lost their sidewalls or ships which can be attacked down the throat or up-the-kilt. The logic (as I understand it) is that energy torpedoes are so devastating that a couple of hits would take out any superdreadnought.
First, let me say that getting into effective energy torpedo range of something as big and powerful as an SD for something as small as a LAC is going to come under the heading of Lots of Luck and that properly designed SD armoring systems are going to be more resistant to energy torpedoes than people seem to be assuming. Second, I think energy torpedo mounts may be just a bit bigger than some people seem to be thinking they are. Third, a Ghost Rider drone platform does not create excess plasma sufficient to feed an energy torpedo. (In regard to that point, please do recall that a LAC’s fission plant’s output is insufficient to power its wedge; that, in fact, all wedges depend at least in part on the “siphoning” effect which allows them to draw power from the next higher band of hyper-space after wedge initiation. So the Ghost Rider’s fusion plant is used — like the LAC’s fission plant — to produce wedge initiation energy which is then “stored”, and then — after the wedge is up and largely self-sustaining — to provide power for its onboard systems, whose energy intensity is nowhere near as great as that of an energy torpedo armament.) Fourth, in converting an existing Shrike by reducing its missile armament in favor of energy torpedoes (if that were possible), you would reduce its effectiveness at other ranges (albeit only incrementally), and the gain in lethality would be equally only incremental, even at close range.
If you really wanted to put energy torpedoes into a Shrike, you couldn’t do it by simply removing a couple of missile launchers. You’d effectively have to gut its entire existing armament, because (A) the energy torpedo launchers themselves are big enough, including the engineering support systems required, that two of them would pretty much use all the mass currently allocated to the Shrike’s graser, and (B) a single one of the Ghost Rider fusion plants you want to install won’t be big enough to feed even a single energy torpedo launcher, which means that you would have to find room for several of them or else magically come up with a fusion plant which is even more efficient and more miniaturized than anything Manticore currently has or sees on its technological event horizon. (It might be theoretically possible to produce the necessary plasma ahead of time then hold it until needed, but your modified Shrike would be able to do that only for a single shot her energy torpedo launcher, which would sort of undercut the “we-don’t-need-no-stinking-magazines-in-order-to-keep-shooting-forever” portion of the argument.) In short, this isn’t the case of just finding someplace to bolt a couple of additional .50 caliber machine guns into the nose of an A-26; this is something which would require major redesign of the existing ship.
Even assuming that it was practical from a hardware perspective (which it isn’t) to put energy torpedoes into an LAC at all, I’m not sure that it would be a reasonable tactical trade-off. Because of the nature of the hardware changes, you would be left with a vessel whose only conceivable function would be to finish off cripples, and that’s not a very economic use of either manpower or the economic resources required to build, train, and man the vessel. In addition, LACs are not currently seen by the Manties or the Havenites as primary strike weapons against even individual capital ships, and certainly not against walls of battle. While I understand that this seems to be being suggested as something to be put together to be used against the Solarians, where such attacks might still be feasible because of the Alliance's tech advantages, I don’t really see either Manticore or Haven at this point investing a lot of money and scarce industrial resources in “something good enough to beat up on the Sollies for the next 10 years and then useless.” They don’t need to make that kind of trade-off in the tactical short-term, and it would be a disastrous trade-off in the tactical long-term.
The current-generation of Grand Alliance LACs is seen primarily as an economic substitute for light units in the system-defense role (against below-the-wall raiding forces and pirates) and as the replacement for conventional light units in a missile defense role. Even the Shrike has sufficient antimissile performance to be a useful addition to a heavier unit’s (or a wall of battle’s) antimissile screening forces, mounted in a platform which is much more resistant to incoming missiles (because of the combination of its small size, maneuverability, and potent self-defense capabilities) than a traditional destroyer or even light cruisers and far more economic in an attritional sense because of the smallness of the cruise involved. Alliance LACs have a secondary role of attacking/engaging system infrastructure as part of a raiding force. Sweeping up enemy “cripples” after an engagement is only a tertiary role, and using them in attacks against intact capital units is Right Out according to the current Alliance tactical playbook.
In the missile-defense role, even simply reducing the launchers available (that is, assuming that it was, in fact, possible to replace missile launchers with energy torpedo launchers on a one-for-one or even a two-for-one basis, which it isn’t) in favor of energy torpedoes would represent a significant degradation in the LAC’s ability to perform its designed function(s).
In the system infrastructure destroying role, missiles and grasers would both be more effective than energy torpedoes because of their greater effective ranges (on the one hand), which would permit them to take out more targets from a given range, and because it really doesn’t matter to a space station or an orbital power collector whether it gets hit by an energy torpedo, a graser, a laserhead, or even a point defense laser (see what HMS Hexapuma did to the freighter which destroyed its pinnace). It’s still going to be dead, and there isn’t really any point in trying to make it even deader.
In the ship-attack role, I can’t think of any reason why the commander of an SD outside the hyper limit whose sidewalls are completely down and who is threatened by LAC attack wouldn’t simply take his ship into hyper and leave the LACs (which aren’t hyper capable) behind, free to shoot at the empty place in normal-space where his ship used to be. Assuming that he couldn’t do that for some reason (like he's inside the hyper limit, for example
), the loss of his sidewalls (absent someone’s proposal to mount a grav lance in a Shrike, as well, which no one had better be making 
) probably means he’s already been hammered into dogmeat. At that point, if there are known Shrikes with those big-assed grasers onboard in the vicinity, anybody except a dyed in the wool fanatic is going to be surrendering his ship rather than seeing the rest of his crew killed for absolutely nothing. And, of course, unless his sidewalls are completely down, the energy-torpedo-armed Shrike would still be forced to execute down-the-throat or up-the-kilt attack profiles, with the minor problem that (presumably) the chase armament would still be intact and would have a little something to say to them as they closed to the energy torpedoes’ very short range.If the hardware constraints permitted the proposed modification, it might — might — have an applicability which the current graser armament doesn’t have. I can’t think of very many instances in which that might be true, however. While it is true that energy torpedoes are not limited by the numbers of missiles on board, their power requirements pose limitations of their own. In addition, it should be noted that energy torpedoes are “short-ranged” (by Honorverse standards) for multiple reasons, one of them being fire control. They are not seeking or guided weapons. Like an energy weapon, they either hit or miss on the basis of their initial targeting and cannot track an evading target or pursue an attack profile that requires them to change course en route to a target. Over their effective range they are about as accurate as an energy weapon (which is to say very accurate), because they travel at what is effectively light-speed, of course, but they suffer from the energy weapon’s need to score a direct hit and do not have the energy weapon’s potential to “burn-through” an intact sidewall if they don’t have an ideal, perfect angle of attack.
Since it is not possible to simply bolt a couple of energy torpedo launchers and the fusion plant to power them onto an existing LAC in place of a couple of missile tubes, however, I can’t think of any reason why the Royal Manticoran Navy or the Republican Navy would be interested.
) might be dropped off the LAC loadout over time as a never/rarely used option, just like the burn/boom warheads were replaced with multimode laserheads (which must have had to trade off a larger warhead to get the space needed for the laserheads.).
