Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

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Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by Puidwen » Wed Oct 25, 2023 1:51 am
Puidwen Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Posts: 42 Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:28 pm	In one of the early books haven had primitive recon drones call argus. And they cause no end of trouble for manticore. One was discovered essentially by pure luck. I'm wondering whether that incident started someone like Sonja Hempi to start speculating about the benefits of stealth recon drones, especially since they had more advance technology then the havenites.
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by Puidwen » Wed Oct 25, 2023 1:51 am

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In one of the early books haven had primitive recon drones call argus. And they cause no end of trouble for manticore. One was discovered essentially by pure luck. I'm wondering whether that incident started someone like Sonja Hempi to start speculating about the benefits of stealth recon drones, especially since they had more advance technology then the havenites.

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by Relax » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:16 am
Relax Fleet Admiral Posts: 3106 Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:18 pm	Erm, no. Had stealth FTL recon drones in HoTQ "stealth" is a meaningless word. Everyone's drones have been "stealth". Some are more stealthy than others. Its just like claimed "stealth" today in fighter jets... what frequencies? What return value is "stealth"? Infrared through X-Ray is the spectrum and Honorverse detects via gravitics as well as an entire different "spectrum" of "stealth" _________ Tally Ho! Relax
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by Relax » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:16 am

Relax
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Erm, no. Had stealth FTL recon drones in HoTQ

"stealth" is a meaningless word. Everyone's drones have been "stealth". Some are more stealthy than others. Its just like claimed "stealth" today in fighter jets... what frequencies? What return value is "stealth"?

Infrared through X-Ray is the spectrum and Honorverse detects via gravitics as well as an entire different "spectrum" of "stealth"

_________
Tally Ho!
Relax

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by tlb » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:37 am
tlb Fleet Admiral Posts: 3964 Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:34 am	Relax wrote:Erm, no. Had stealth FTL recon drones in HoTQ "stealth" is a meaningless word. Everyone's drones have been "stealth". Some are more stealthy than others. Its just like claimed "stealth" today in fighter jets... what frequencies? What return value is "stealth"? Infrared through X-Ray is the spectrum and Honorverse detects via gravitics as well as an entire different "spectrum" of "stealth" I don't think that makes stealth meaningless, just that it is a spectrum as you state. All that means is that you need addition words to qualify where in the spectrum of stealth some platform resides. Just the same as temperature, saying something has a temperature is a trivially true statement; so you need additional words to indicate where on the scale an item is.
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by tlb » Wed Oct 25, 2023 8:37 am

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Relax wrote:Erm, no. Had stealth FTL recon drones in HoTQ

"stealth" is a meaningless word. Everyone's drones have been "stealth". Some are more stealthy than others. Its just like claimed "stealth" today in fighter jets... what frequencies? What return value is "stealth"?

Infrared through X-Ray is the spectrum and Honorverse detects via gravitics as well as an entire different "spectrum" of "stealth"

I don't think that makes stealth meaningless, just that it is a spectrum as you state. All that means is that you need addition words to qualify where in the spectrum of stealth some platform resides. Just the same as temperature, saying something has a temperature is a trivially true statement; so you need additional words to indicate where on the scale an item is.

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by Jonathan_S » Wed Oct 25, 2023 9:52 am
Jonathan_S Fleet Admiral Posts: 8329 Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:01 pm Location: Virginia, USA	Recon drones, with the best stealth anybody could build for them, were a staple of all navies well before the start of the series. But they tended to be relatively low powered endurance; which reduced their effectiveness. (Though if deployed as stationary sensor platforms, as Honor did in the first book, they can last longer; but even then "They were never intended for long-term deployment like this" [OBS Ch.7]) Against an enemy ship/fleet you generally had to launch them on direct path after you were already on a converging course -- and knowing approximately when, and from what direction, the drones would be coming made it easier for them to detect and destroy your drones. (Heck, sometimes the drone launches could be seen) Because they lacked the powered drive endurance to be launched early to take long dogleg courses towards the enemy you tended to have to shotgun a bunch of drones towards the enemy in the hopes that enough would get close enough to give you a snapshot of what their force before flying past or getting destroyed. Though it's not impossible that the Argus network reemphasized to the RMN how useful having an RD with a far longer endurance could be - as those platforms had far longer endurance, even a stationary sensor platforms, than a common RD). But what makes Ghost Rider so much better than previous RDs is its insane powered endurance - you can run the drive long enough to use them to shadow the enemy fleet (or maintain a sensor shell around your own). You can launch them to make their way through an system of interest and come back days later to retrieve them. Or just spam out a bunch when you enter the system and have them take evasive sources towards your targets of interest. (And that extra power might help run more effective stealth fields -- but that's personal speculation)
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by Jonathan_S » Wed Oct 25, 2023 9:52 am

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Recon drones, with the best stealth anybody could build for them, were a staple of all navies well before the start of the series.
But they tended to be relatively low powered endurance; which reduced their effectiveness. (Though if deployed as stationary sensor platforms, as Honor did in the first book, they can last longer; but even then "They were never intended for long-term deployment like this" [OBS Ch.7])

Against an enemy ship/fleet you generally had to launch them on direct path after you were already on a converging course -- and knowing approximately when, and from what direction, the drones would be coming made it easier for them to detect and destroy your drones. (Heck, sometimes the drone launches could be seen) Because they lacked the powered drive endurance to be launched early to take long dogleg courses towards the enemy you tended to have to shotgun a bunch of drones towards the enemy in the hopes that enough would get close enough to give you a snapshot of what their force before flying past or getting destroyed.

Though it's not impossible that the Argus network reemphasized to the RMN how useful having an RD with a far longer endurance could be - as those platforms had far longer endurance, even a stationary sensor platforms, than a common RD).

But what makes Ghost Rider so much better than previous RDs is its insane powered endurance - you can run the drive long enough to use them to shadow the enemy fleet (or maintain a sensor shell around your own). You can launch them to make their way through an system of interest and come back days later to retrieve them. Or just spam out a bunch when you enter the system and have them take evasive sources towards your targets of interest. (And that extra power might help run more effective stealth fields -- but that's personal speculation)

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by ThinksMarkedly » Wed Oct 25, 2023 2:09 pm
ThinksMarkedly Fleet Admiral Posts: 4169 Joined: Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:39 am	Jonathan_S wrote:Recon drones, with the best stealth anybody could build for them, were a staple of all navies well before the start of the series. We're retroactively introduced to the first drone in A Call to Vengeance. This was a massive drone, carried on a hardpoint outside of a battleship (the SMS Vergeltung) and occupying a place where something else would generally be (I don't recall without rereading the text whether it was a pinnace or a missile launcher). The Vergeltung had exactly one drone, though this drone had a extended endurance of a day (I think). I don't remember if it was wedge-powered or used rockets like the missiles of the time did on launch. And yet this drone was not detected by the Volsungs. They didn't even know they were being scouted at the time, so there may have been no sensor sweep that could have detected it. My guess is that, like missiles, drones at the time were incredibly expensive pieces of hardware. During the intervening centuries, they got smaller and cheaper, to the point where endurance was sacrificed so they'd be small enough to be carried aboard destroyers. But what makes Ghost Rider so much better than previous RDs is its insane powered endurance - you can run the drive long enough to use them to shadow the enemy fleet (or maintain a sensor shell around your own). You can launch them to make their way through an system of interest and come back days later to retrieve them. Or just spam out a bunch when you enter the system and have them take evasive sources towards your targets of interest. (And that extra power might help run more effective stealth fields -- but that's personal speculation) And the FTL comms, let's not forget that.
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by ThinksMarkedly » Wed Oct 25, 2023 2:09 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Recon drones, with the best stealth anybody could build for them, were a staple of all navies well before the start of the series.

We're retroactively introduced to the first drone in A Call to Vengeance. This was a massive drone, carried on a hardpoint outside of a battleship (the SMS Vergeltung) and occupying a place where something else would generally be (I don't recall without rereading the text whether it was a pinnace or a missile launcher). The Vergeltung had exactly one drone, though this drone had a extended endurance of a day (I think). I don't remember if it was wedge-powered or used rockets like the missiles of the time did on launch.

And yet this drone was not detected by the Volsungs. They didn't even know they were being scouted at the time, so there may have been no sensor sweep that could have detected it.

My guess is that, like missiles, drones at the time were incredibly expensive pieces of hardware. During the intervening centuries, they got smaller and cheaper, to the point where endurance was sacrificed so they'd be small enough to be carried aboard destroyers.

But what makes Ghost Rider so much better than previous RDs is its insane powered endurance - you can run the drive long enough to use them to shadow the enemy fleet (or maintain a sensor shell around your own). You can launch them to make their way through an system of interest and come back days later to retrieve them. Or just spam out a bunch when you enter the system and have them take evasive sources towards your targets of interest. (And that extra power might help run more effective stealth fields -- but that's personal speculation)

And the FTL comms, let's not forget that.

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by Jonathan_S » Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:46 pm
Jonathan_S Fleet Admiral Posts: 8329 Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:01 pm Location: Virginia, USA	ThinksMarkedly wrote: Jonathan_S wrote:Recon drones, with the best stealth anybody could build for them, were a staple of all navies well before the start of the series. We're retroactively introduced to the first drone in A Call to Vengeance. This was a massive drone, carried on a hardpoint outside of a battleship (the SMS Vergeltung) and occupying a place where something else would generally be (I don't recall without rereading the text whether it was a pinnace or a missile launcher). The Vergeltung had exactly one drone, though this drone had a extended endurance of a day (I think). I don't remember if it was wedge-powered or used rockets like the missiles of the time did on launch. And yet this drone was not detected by the Volsungs. They didn't even know they were being scouted at the time, so there may have been no sensor sweep that could have detected it. My guess is that, like missiles, drones at the time were incredibly expensive pieces of hardware. During the intervening centuries, they got smaller and cheaper, to the point where endurance was sacrificed so they'd be small enough to be carried aboard destroyers. But what makes Ghost Rider so much better than previous RDs is its insane powered endurance - you can run the drive long enough to use them to shadow the enemy fleet (or maintain a sensor shell around your own). You can launch them to make their way through an system of interest and come back days later to retrieve them. Or just spam out a bunch when you enter the system and have them take evasive sources towards your targets of interest. (And that extra power might help run more effective stealth fields -- but that's personal speculation) And the FTL comms, let's not forget that. True, true. And it seems like by the start of the series the most pressing endurance issue of even those smaller drones was how long the RDs could afford to power their drives. Yes, during OBS, there was concern about how long they'd last as stationary sensor buoys. But there they were worried about endurance measured in weeks or months - far longer than any tactical use should need. Otherwise, as I said, the concern seems to be drive endurance as the drones would be able to sense and transmit for at least as long as the battle would last -- but that's not much use if the enemy changes course and your drones don't have to drive power to vector after them. However some of that usage pattern may just be stagnated doctrine that says you use destroyers to push forward and keep an eye on the enemy fleet; and reserve your RDs primarily for penetrating through their screen to ID ships within their formation (to help program your missile targeting) and to hopefully detect any attempt to hide extra combatants in amongst the main formation. (To counter that later - see Honor using a deliberately messy formation at 4th Yeltsin to discourage the Peeps from launching the RDs swarm that might have unmasked her SDs before the trap could be sprung)
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by Jonathan_S » Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:46 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Recon drones, with the best stealth anybody could build for them, were a staple of all navies well before the start of the series.

We're retroactively introduced to the first drone in A Call to Vengeance. This was a massive drone, carried on a hardpoint outside of a battleship (the SMS Vergeltung) and occupying a place where something else would generally be (I don't recall without rereading the text whether it was a pinnace or a missile launcher). The Vergeltung had exactly one drone, though this drone had a extended endurance of a day (I think). I don't remember if it was wedge-powered or used rockets like the missiles of the time did on launch.

And yet this drone was not detected by the Volsungs. They didn't even know they were being scouted at the time, so there may have been no sensor sweep that could have detected it.

My guess is that, like missiles, drones at the time were incredibly expensive pieces of hardware. During the intervening centuries, they got smaller and cheaper, to the point where endurance was sacrificed so they'd be small enough to be carried aboard destroyers.

But what makes Ghost Rider so much better than previous RDs is its insane powered endurance - you can run the drive long enough to use them to shadow the enemy fleet (or maintain a sensor shell around your own). You can launch them to make their way through an system of interest and come back days later to retrieve them. Or just spam out a bunch when you enter the system and have them take evasive sources towards your targets of interest. (And that extra power might help run more effective stealth fields -- but that's personal speculation)

And the FTL comms, let's not forget that.

True, true.
And it seems like by the start of the series the most pressing endurance issue of even those smaller drones was how long the RDs could afford to power their drives.

Yes, during OBS, there was concern about how long they'd last as stationary sensor buoys. But there they were worried about endurance measured in weeks or months - far longer than any tactical use should need. Otherwise, as I said, the concern seems to be drive endurance as the drones would be able to sense and transmit for at least as long as the battle would last -- but that's not much use if the enemy changes course and your drones don't have to drive power to vector after them.

However some of that usage pattern may just be stagnated doctrine that says you use destroyers to push forward and keep an eye on the enemy fleet; and reserve your RDs primarily for penetrating through their screen to ID ships within their formation (to help program your missile targeting) and to hopefully detect any attempt to hide extra combatants in amongst the main formation.

(To counter that later - see Honor using a deliberately messy formation at 4th Yeltsin to discourage the Peeps from launching the RDs swarm that might have unmasked her SDs before the trap could be sprung)

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by ThinksMarkedly » Wed Oct 25, 2023 10:09 pm
ThinksMarkedly Fleet Admiral Posts: 4169 Joined: Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:39 am	Jonathan_S wrote:(To counter that later - see Honor using a deliberately messy formation at 4th Yeltsin to discourage the Peeps from launching the RDs swarm that might have unmasked her SDs before the trap could be sprung) And that only worked because Shannon Foraker was too junior to be taken seriously, even by herself. "They're forming a wall" "Battlecruisers don't form walls"
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by ThinksMarkedly » Wed Oct 25, 2023 10:09 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:(To counter that later - see Honor using a deliberately messy formation at 4th Yeltsin to discourage the Peeps from launching the RDs swarm that might have unmasked her SDs before the trap could be sprung)

And that only worked because Shannon Foraker was too junior to be taken seriously, even by herself.

"They're forming a wall"
"Battlecruisers don't form walls"

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by Robert_A_Woodward » Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:37 am
Robert_A_Woodward Captain of the List Posts: 544 Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:29 pm	ThinksMarkedly wrote: Jonathan_S wrote:(To counter that later - see Honor using a deliberately messy formation at 4th Yeltsin to discourage the Peeps from launching the RDs swarm that might have unmasked her SDs before the trap could be sprung) And that only worked because Shannon Foraker was too junior to be taken seriously, even by herself. "They're forming a wall" "Battlecruisers don't form walls" I think she had a good idea of what she was seeing: "...suicide--for battlecruisers" ---------------------------- Beowulf was bad. (first sentence of Chapter VI of _Space Viking_ by H. Beam Piper)
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by Robert_A_Woodward » Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:37 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:(To counter that later - see Honor using a deliberately messy formation at 4th Yeltsin to discourage the Peeps from launching the RDs swarm that might have unmasked her SDs before the trap could be sprung)

And that only worked because Shannon Foraker was too junior to be taken seriously, even by herself.

"They're forming a wall"
"Battlecruisers don't form walls"

I think she had a good idea of what she was seeing:

"...suicide--for battlecruisers"

----------------------------
Beowulf was bad.
(first sentence of Chapter VI of _Space Viking_ by H. Beam Piper)

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by tlb » Thu Oct 26, 2023 9:16 am
tlb Fleet Admiral Posts: 3964 Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:34 am	Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I think she had a good idea of what she was seeing: "...suicide--for battlecruisers" Chapter 32 wrote:The confusion of the rest of their formation had hidden it from him, but now that those individual units had been highlighted, the spacing virtually leapt out of the display at him. Yet there was something wrong with it. . . . Citizen Vice Admiral Alexander Thurston punched a query into his console, and his face went pale as dispassionate computers answered it. No, that interval was all wrong for a wall of battlecruisers—but it was just right for one of superdreadnoughts. . . .
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by tlb » Thu Oct 26, 2023 9:16 am

tlb
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Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I think she had a good idea of what she was seeing:

"...suicide--for battlecruisers"

Chapter 32 wrote:The confusion of the rest of their formation had hidden it from him, but now that those individual units had been highlighted, the spacing virtually leapt out of the display at him. Yet there was something wrong with it. . . .

Citizen Vice Admiral Alexander Thurston punched a query into his console, and his face went pale as dispassionate computers answered it. No, that interval was all wrong for a wall of battlecruisers—but it was just right for one of superdreadnoughts. . . .

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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?
by ThinksMarkedly » Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:40 pm
ThinksMarkedly Fleet Admiral Posts: 4169 Joined: Sat Aug 17, 2019 11:39 am	Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I think she had a good idea of what she was seeing: "...suicide--for battlecruisers" Once the evidence couldn't be denied and Honor couldn't hide too much any longer, yes. That's what tlb posted above. My point is that early on she was partly seeing through what Honor was trying to hide, but she didn't yet have the confidence in herself to believe her own conclusions. Even if she did, she was too junior to be believed by the flag deck. It was easier to believe the lie that Honor was trying to sell that the GSN was flying battlecruisers to their suicide because it was the only thing they could do.
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Re: Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

by ThinksMarkedly » Thu Oct 26, 2023 3:40 pm

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Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I think she had a good idea of what she was seeing:

"...suicide--for battlecruisers"

Once the evidence couldn't be denied and Honor couldn't hide too much any longer, yes. That's what tlb posted above.

My point is that early on she was partly seeing through what Honor was trying to hide, but she didn't yet have the confidence in herself to believe her own conclusions. Even if she did, she was too junior to be believed by the flag deck. It was easier to believe the lie that Honor was trying to sell that the GSN was flying battlecruisers to their suicide because it was the only thing they could do.

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Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?