NEED TO KNOW

Theemile wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
He was a numbskull and was only assigned to as a station commander because it was such a low-value target. Which means a ship with a secret weapon would never be sent there in the first place.

He wasn't even assigned Station commander - it just fell to him because he was the most senior naval officer assigned to the station.

There was discussion between White Haven and the commander of the Yard of how Young had screwed the pooch by leaving Basilisk aboard Warlock, rather than detaching himself and remaining in Basilisk aboard Fearless. Having left Basilisk he had no claim on returning, other than aboard his command. Which was in the process of being gutted by the yard.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Which is why this situation is unreal. The station commander would have been briefed on the weapons at his disposal. Assuming the bureaucracy worked, of course.

Yep. (Hence why I called it extremely unlikely).

Now you can get situations where someone lower in the chain of command is briefed in on things that their superior isn't cleared to know -- but they wouldn't be about the weapons on their ship. That would usually happen because you've transferred roles.

Say you had been serving a rotation at naval intelligence and then rotate back out to command a ship, division, or squadron -- there would be things you know from your time in intel that your intel superiors were aware of and cleared for; but your immediate superiors in the fleet are not (and have no immediate need to know).


Same might happen when Honor came back from her stint at the weapons development board. There were probably some development projects in the pipeline that she was aware of that weren't yet cleared for release to even high command in the fleet.

So, for example, she knew she was being assigned to White Haven's fleet and that he'd been briefed on part of Ghost Rider plus MDMs, SD(P)s, CLACs, and Shrikes -- and she was specifically tasked to discuss those with him.
But even in her brief stint at the WDB it's unlikely that she was only working on those systems that were about to enter broad production and would begin deploying to the fleet in the next 18-24 months. She almost assuredly had some input on systems that were further off. (Though probably not Apollo as it was way too far off to need operational input yet; and too potentially revolutionary to want to let people knowledgeable about it back to the front where they might be captured)

So I'm not sure what those other systems might have been; but whatever they were she did not discuss those with White Haven because, at that time he had no need to know (and therefore was not cleared for) that R&D that was less mature and further from being a deployable system. (Equally the WDB might have had some proposals that she helped shoot down based on her frontline experience. And she similarly didn't discuss those)

Though I can think of one historic situation where the fleet command wasn't briefed on the weapons one of their ships was carrying -- but it's a technicality.

In WWII the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) was dispatched from San Francisco to Tinian (by way of Pearl Harbor) transporting the Little Boy atomic bomb. I don't think the Admirals in charge of the various operational areas she passed through, and was assigned to, were briefed on what her cargo was.

However, like I said, that's a technicality because she was only transporting the weapon -- she had no way to deploy it. So it had no tactical impact on any plans the Admirals might have had -- and they did know of her highest priority orders to proceed to Tinian; so they knew not to try to redirect her for some combat tasking.


But yeah, normally there's no way you'd deliberately dispatch an aircraft or ship to join someone's command if they weren't cleared for the weapons or systems it carried. (Maybe, maybe, it might carry some secret squirrel SigInt capture stuff where they weren't cleared to know exactly what the attached intel wienies who ran it were looking for -- but that's not a tactical or operational capability of the plane/ship).

cthia wrote:Actually I agree, but I don't think the scenario is unreal. As I said, in the Navy, shit happens.

Do consider that I said Young was sent orders to return Home, but the dispatch boat had been destroyed.

The point is that I don't think the Admiralty would trust such a classified life-line like Apollo to a numbskull like Pavel Young. If captured, Young would have squealed like a stuck pig.

That'd require some really tight timing. Basilisk orbit is less than 2 days transit time from Manticore orbit -- and it's less than 14 hours signal delay.

Honor showing up and finding that Young failed to get the recall order and nobody else knew about it would be exceptionally weird. And if anybody did know about the dispatch boat getting destroyed the orders would have almost certainly been resent before Honor arrived.

Also, Honor was considered too junior to have responsibility for commanding Basilisk Station - so the Admiralty would never have dispatched just her and Fearless after withdrawing Young and Warlock.


If they really had to send her and Fearless they'd have either sent at least one more cruiser (with a more senior captain) with her or else assigned a commodore or something to Fearless (either way that other officer would be acting station commander by virtue of being the highest ranked commanding officer in the system). But they'd have ensured that they had a more experienced (and trusted) officer in charge.

Jonathan_S wrote:That'd require some really tight timing. Basilisk orbit is less than 2 days transit time from Manticore orbit -- and it's less than 14 hours signal delay.

I'd assumed this scenario was somewhere other than in a direct system connected to a Junction Terminus. There's no way an order can get missed from the Admiralty to Medusa orbit. This is before the age of Hermes buoys, but there should have been a light-seed relay system between Manticore-A, Manticore-B, and the Junction. From the Terminus to Medusa orbit, there may not have been one, but it's probably just a handful of light-hours distant (2 to 4). It's possible to make a direct transmission -- we're hearing from Voyager 1 and it's 21.6 light-hours away!

Even if direct transmission doesn't happen, with all the traffic from the Terminus to the inner system, the message would be sent encrypted over many different ships carrying mail.

Jonathan_S wrote:So, for example, she knew she was being assigned to White Haven's fleet and that he'd been briefed on part of Ghost Rider plus MDMs, SD(P)s, CLACs, and Shrikes -- and she was specifically tasked to discuss those with him.

By Sonja!

"Would you please tell my childhood friend that I win the discussion we started back in 1850?"

Here is an example of a junior officer who might be cleared for a secret that an Admiral wasn't. The recon drones (with grav com) that were introduced in _The Honor of the Queen_, had been tested by the destroyer "Troubadour" (Alistair McKeon commanding). It is entirely possible that Lieutenant (JG) Scotty Tremaine was deeply involved in that test program. But, since this hadn't yet been released for distribution to the fleet, would Admiral White Haven even know about it at that time?

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Here is an example of a junior officer who might be cleared for a secret that an Admiral wasn't. The recon drones (with grav com) that were introduced in _The Honor of the Queen_, had been tested by the destroyer "Troubadour" (Alistair McKeon commanding). It is entirely possible that Lieutenant (JG) Scotty Tremaine was deeply involved in that test program. But, since this hadn't yet been released for distribution to the fleet, would Admiral White Haven even know about it at that time?

Maybe. White Haven knew about it when he arrived at Yeltsin.

But he knew from Truman's report that the cruiser's gravitics were gone, and without Troubadour, she had no one to relay from the recon drones for her. That meant Harrington couldn't know his ships had arrived unless he told her, and he turned to his com officer.

"Record for transmission to Fearless, Harry. 'Captain Harrington, this is Admiral White Haven aboard HMS Reliant, closing from zero-three-one with BatCruDiv One-Eight, range twelve-point-five light-minutes. I estimate eight-two minutes before I can range on Saladin. Break off and leave her to us, Captain. You've done your job. White Haven clear.'"

It's possible that Truman's earlier report was what actually briefed him about the FTL com. If White Haven didn't already know, this was when he would have found out about it:

"I'm afraid I haven't met Captain Harrington, Commander," he said. "I know her record, but I don't know her or her present situation, so I want you to begin from the beginning and tell us everything that happened from the moment you first entered Yeltsin space."

"Yes, Sir." Truman drew a deep breath and straightened in her chair. "We arrived on schedule, My Lord, and—"

munroburton wrote:

"Record for transmission to Fearless, Harry. 'Captain Harrington, this is Admiral White Haven aboard HMS Reliant, closing from zero-three-one with BatCruDiv One-Eight, range twelve-point-five light-minutes. I estimate eight-two minutes before I can range on Saladin. Break off and leave her to us, Captain. You've done your job. White Haven clear.'"

Just noticed that it's HMS Reliant, the lead ship in a BatCruDiv. At the time, we had no idea what this meant. It isn't until page 308 of 344 (89%) in SVW that the Peeps identify HMS Nike as "one of the new Reliant-class ships" that the name gained significance.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:That'd require some really tight timing. Basilisk orbit is less than 2 days transit time from Manticore orbit -- and it's less than 14 hours signal delay.

I'd assumed this scenario was somewhere other than in a direct system connected to a Junction Terminus. There's no way an order can get missed from the Admiralty to Medusa orbit. This is before the age of Hermes buoys, but there should have been a light-seed relay system between Manticore-A, Manticore-B, and the Junction. From the Terminus to Medusa orbit, there may not have been one, but it's probably just a handful of light-hours distant (2 to 4). It's possible to make a direct transmission -- we're hearing from Voyager 1 and it's 21.6 light-hours away!

Even if direct transmission doesn't happen, with all the traffic from the Terminus to the inner system, the message would be sent encrypted over many different ships carrying mail.

I don't think you can send Hermes buoy messages through a junction, although, you could use a dispatch boat. I don't remember where I read that, though.