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Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Dec 19, 2022 10:35 am

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kzt wrote:Luckily, now that the war is over and the threat utterly destroyed, the truth be revealed. :twisted:


Famous last words?

Anyway, no, even in peace time you don't immediately reveal your intel methods and sources. Even if they were convinced the MAlign was dead and defeated, which I dispute they do, some secrets will probably remain for 25 to 50 years.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by Theemile   » Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:43 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
kzt wrote:Luckily, now that the war is over and the threat utterly destroyed, the truth be revealed. :twisted:


Famous last words?

Anyway, no, even in peace time you don't immediately reveal your intel methods and sources. Even if they were convinced the MAlign was dead and defeated, which I dispute they do, some secrets will probably remain for 25 to 50 years.


Last I heard, there were still some documents from the ACW and Lincoln assassination deemed classified and not released to the public. Some secrets will probably be buried forever.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by kzt   » Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:49 am

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Theemile wrote:
Last I heard, there were still some documents from the ACW and Lincoln assassination deemed classified and not released to the public. Some secrets will probably be buried forever.

But memoirs, preening articles in the press sourced to 'senior administration officials', etc. People want to have their cleverness and accomplishments acknowledged. And there are a LOT of people in multiple navies who know a lot.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by Robert_A_Woodward   » Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:12 am

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kzt wrote:
Theemile wrote:
Last I heard, there were still some documents from the ACW and Lincoln assassination deemed classified and not released to the public. Some secrets will probably be buried forever.

But memoirs, preening articles in the press sourced to 'senior administration officials', etc. People want to have their cleverness and accomplishments acknowledged. And there are a LOT of people in multiple navies who know a lot.


But what do they know? One, many know that the RMN did a very discreet search of several systems in a specific region of space. Two, a lesser number might know or at least believe that Anton Zilwicki specified that region. But only a very small number know WHY he specified that region and I doubt that they will be talking. It is possible that Colin Detweiler might hear about that certain former members of the Haven's State Security had been part of an expedition to Hole in the Wall under Victor Cachat and he certainly would have heard about the raid on Jessek's station at Warner and probably heard of the subsequent trip of a certain yacht to Mannerheim. Thus, there is a possibility he will put 2 and 2 together and realize how Dalton's position had been compromised. Or not.
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Beowulf was bad.
(first sentence of Chapter VI of _Space Viking_ by H. Beam Piper)
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by kzt   » Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:34 am

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Robert_A_Woodward wrote:But what do they know? One, many know that the RMN did a very discreet search of several systems in a specific region of space. Two, a lesser number might know or at least believe that Anton Zilwicki specified that region. But only a very small number know WHY he specified that region and I doubt that they will be talking.

Based on how many people seem to have been told about bolthole's location who have no need to know, many more than you would think reasonable.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by markusschaber   » Tue Dec 20, 2022 12:01 pm

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kzt wrote:Based on how many people seem to have been told about bolthole's location who have no need to know, many more than you would think reasonable.


Who actually has been told of boldhole's location? I guess that most of the people brought there from Haven (and later other GA partners) don't know the location itself, only the astronavigators and few other high crew members know the location (or maybe only the location of the other end of the wormhole in haven territory).
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by kzt   » Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:35 pm

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markusschaber wrote:Who actually has been told of boldhole's location? I guess that most of the people brought there from Haven (and later other GA partners) don't know the location itself, only the astronavigators and few other high crew members know the location (or maybe only the location of the other end of the wormhole in haven territory).

As far as I can can remember, no PoV character has a need to know where it is. And yet they were told.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by Brigade XO   » Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:18 pm

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Data mining combined with intelligence operations.
We, the readers, know how Anton Zilwicki came to the conclusion about where the probate target (know known as Galton) was and that multiple search/survey groups with escorts were sent to eavesdrop on several star systems in that area. One group found confirmation that there was an unknown heavenly industralized system where none was known and that got the visit from Harrington and the GA fleet. I don't recall any mention of the results of any of the other searches but we have to guess that the survey ships involved found no evidence that any of them were inhabited.
We won't get any more information about what the Alignment does or does not know (or suspect) at least until the next book.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by tlb   » Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:22 am

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tlb wrote:Can you suggest a better reason for the people at Galton thinking that it was data mining, and not spying?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I can't, because I don't think they came to that conclusion either. There's no indication they or the Alignment still in Darius knows how their system was found. They can speculate any way they want, but they have no evidence for things one way or the other.

The only way they'd know that the system was targeted is if they caught scouts in other systems. That would allow for the conclusion that the Alliance didn't know which system exactly it was.

I don't know if Galton had such listening platforms in nearby systems, as an early-warning tripwire. A sufficiently paranoid actor with sufficient resources would do that, but there's no indication that the Galton military did such a thing. And even if they did, there's no indication they saw the scouts.

All we know is that when the GF did come, it was a surprise. If they had known they had been scouted, they could calculate the window of time for likely GF arrivals based on travel time to and from Galton, via suitable wormholes. At this point, they still had some level of Intel that could tell that the GF was preparing for something, plus they had streak drives to beat the GF from the Manticore system. But they were not at any level of readiness, so that tells us that Galton did not detect the scout.

I mean, at least, that's the conclusion I came to, which seems to be what the text strongly implied. I may be reading too much, but I don't think I'm the only one.

They were specifically told that the Grand Alliance would be on them soon by the Detweiler that came to visit.

If you do not believe that the scout was detected, why would you believe that they could be detected in other systems which do not have detector arrays?

After the Detweiler warning, they would be as ready as ever. I will continue to insist that their very speculation is an indication that the scout was detected. But if you do do not want to accept that, then so be it.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:26 pm

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tlb wrote:They were specifically told that the Grand Alliance would be on them soon by the Detweiler that came to visit.


That happened before the Alliance knew where Galton was. So there was no reason for Benjamin to believe the detection was imminent. He came to Galton to advise the Inner Onion members there that they'd made a mistake with the Beowulf Strike: they revealed far too much of "The Other Guys" existence, to the point where the press couldn't keep denying its existence. And they poked the Alliance in general and Beowulf in particular far too much in the eye, causing them to devote enormous resources to finding the Alignment.

But I don't think anyone expected Galton to be found that quickly. In fact, later when "Call Me Phoebe" was talking to Audrey, she said they couldn't be sure the Alliance would find Galton instead of Darius. I don't think anyone in the Onion expected Darius to be found first, since the tracks leading to it are far much better hidden, but Felix isn't.

But they did expect Galton to be found, eventually. That was the purpose of the visit: to warn that the Alamo Contingency would need to happen. That's also why there were simulations in Darius about how Galton could possibly defend itself (and concluding that it was impossible).

If you do not believe that the scout was detected, why would you believe that they could be detected in other systems which do not have detector arrays?


I don't.

I merely said that they could only be sure that it was a regional scouting if they detected scouts in multiple systems. But they have no way to prove a negative: the fact that they didn't see any scouts does not mean such scouting didn't happen.

And I don't think they had assets in place to even attempt to detect in other systems.

After the Detweiler warning, they would be as ready as ever. I will continue to insist that their very speculation is an indication that the scout was detected. But if you do do not want to accept that, then so be it.


That was a pointless visit. Galton couldn't change its defensive stance: it would be allowed no more technology than what it already had. All it could do was build what it already plans for or could legitimately explain away, like the Hasta.

And they couldn't remain at Defcon 2 or whatever is equivalent to that for years. Such a heigtened state of alert is only possible with some intel that an attack is imminent within a given window of time.

The only thing that visit served, besides giving us readers an insight into why Galton existed, who was there, and Benjamin and his brothers' state of mind after Albrecht's death, was to soothe Benjamin's conscience. Adebayo and Montalván basically sent him back saying, "we're fine, don't worry about us, we'll die for the cause."
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