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The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.

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Re: The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.
Post by Vince   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:58 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Theemile wrote:It was significant enough that missile pods fell out of favor because the the difference flight patterns between shipborn launchers and pod launchers.

And Yes, I ignored the relative capabilities of RMN versus SLN or PRH missiles.

And the nebulous # is closer to 10,000 than 10 - but you are right, it is a nebulous margin and could be offset by superior missiles.

But as you pointed out it wsan't until the MDM environment that that did not matter. In an era without MDMs or advanced grav launchers, the Podnaught would have far less of an advantage, even with longer ranged SDMs.
Even if we accept that a 1890s era pod launched missiles have inferior range and terminal velocity, by the time we're talking about SD(P)s I don't know that it really matters.

Remember, before pods missile fire from SDs was almost never decisive. It was attritional, and you used it for probing the other side and degrading their ships (although if you mission killed a couple that's a nice bonus) before closing to energy range.

But given the huge numbers of missiles any pod layer can fire off the increased effectiveness of the other side's point defense against the slower missiles is probably irrelevant. Something scaled to deal with less than 40 missile broadsides is going to get over-saturated and break down when faced with a 120 missile double pattern (assuming 10 missiles per pod, 6 pods per salvo) even if they are moving a bit slower.

Even if the SD(P) has to wade through as much as a million KM of unanswered fire it's still going to be relatively unscathed when it reaches a point where it can unleash a (shorter ranged) missile swarm.



The lightweight grav launchers matter more if an SD is towing only a couple pods; then achieving time on target, with full terminal velocity, of the pod and broadside missiles is somewhat important. But when you're throwing 12+ pods every 30 seconds shear numbers trump distance and terminal velocity.

I think you are forgetting one of the major points that actually made missile combat decisive (besides the SDP's ability to swamp the missile defense of the target) as an offensive tactic instead of the skirmishing to feel out the opposition (ECM, tactics, etc.) that it originally was.

That point is that prior to the recent development and deployment of an effective capital laser warhead for the missiles, missiles in even large numbers were seldom decisive against SDs. Standard SDs would concentrate all their missile fire against one or just a very few individual SDs in the opposing force, and the targets would be very difficult to even mission kill before the opposing forces would close to energy range (if they did at all, most of the time the forces that were getting the worst of it would break off combat).

The capital laser head, in combination with the new missile pods grav launchers, sensors with better discrimination (ECCM), use of dedicated ECM missiles and the SDPs ability to maintain heavy rates of fire changed missile combat not just in degree, but in type.

Imagine combat between two forces just 50 years ago before an effective capital laser head was in use. Give one side SDPs, and the other side standard SDs. Keep all the other technology the same. A lot of the advantage a modern SDP has is significantly reduced.

Instead of a 50,000km laser head standoff attack range that can punch through the sidewall and hit the target and damage it to some degree, you have a standoff attack range in (sidewall) burn mode of 10,000km, putting your missile much closer to the target's point defense where the chance of the missile being destroyed rises rapidly.

And even if it isn't destroyed all it can do is dump a large amount of energy towards the target with the objective of weakening the sidewall by overloading the sidewall generators (it won't penetrate to the SD and damage it).

If you can get enough of these missiles successfully targeting the SDs sidewalls fast enough eventually the sidewall generators burn out. And then the SD rolls ship (if it hasn't already done so) to point the other broadside with the unaffected sidewall at you.

Or if you fire the missile in boom (contact) mode, you have to get the missile up to the target's sidewall (only 10km from the SD you are targeting) where point defense has an excellent chance of destroying it. (The expression used in universe for a contact nuke to get through point defense around this time was the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell.)

Even if the target's point defense misses, the sidewall penetrators have to work perfectly at just the right time to get the warhead through the sidewall (when Fearless did this against Thunder of God in Second Yeltsin, only 2 of 4 missile's sidewall penetrators worked well enough to get the warheads through).

Then the contact nuke has to go off at the right time in less than the time it takes for the warhead to travel 10km (while the warhead is still traveling toward the SD, not after it has passed the target). A lot of contact nukes that did make it through the sidewalls historically had this problem.

So the SDP, by itself, wasn't the driving force that made missile combat the preeminent tactic it is now in the Honorverse. It took a lot of other improvements in many other technologies, in combination with the idea of the SDP to bring missile combat to the decisive tactic it is today.
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Re: The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 10:39 pm

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Vince wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Even if we accept that a 1890s era pod launched missiles have inferior range and terminal velocity, by the time we're talking about SD(P)s I don't know that it really matters.

I think you are forgetting one of the major points that actually made missile combat decisive (besides the SDP's ability to swamp the missile defense of the target) as an offensive tactic instead of the skirmishing to feel out the opposition (ECM, tactics, etc.) that it originally was.

That point is that prior to the recent development and deployment of an effective capital laser warhead for the missiles, missiles in even large numbers were seldom decisive against SDs. [snip]
You're right, I wasn't thinking about a pre-laserhead environment. (But fortunately I happened to pick an example timeframe that was after laserheads came into service; fhew.

But I think you're right that boom/burn warheads would be a lot less effective at saturation attacks. Well especially boom warheads with sidewall penetrators. A ship's sidewall is a small enough target that only a handful of missiles can try to hit it simultaneously before the attacking missiles start suffering wedge fratricide trying to cram into the same space. So not only are they extremely close targets for point defense, but no matter how many you launch it's got a max number the PDLCs ever had to engage at once.
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Re: The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.
Post by Dafmeister   » Thu Mar 20, 2014 5:38 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:You're right, I wasn't thinking about a pre-laserhead environment. (But fortunately I happened to pick an example timeframe that was after laserheads came into service; fhew.


Don't forget, Manticore and Haven were the first navies to put laser heads into the field (Haven first, if I remember In Fire Forged correctly); the SLN threw out the concept after disappointing initial trials.
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Re: The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.
Post by fester   » Thu Mar 20, 2014 9:56 am

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My comments below:

Jonathan_S wrote:
fester wrote: You sure about that? I can buy a statement of there had not been multiple fleets of SDs pounding other multiple fleets of SDs -- each with complete fleet trains, screens and support infrastructure on fronts of 100's of light years --- but I would be surprised that an SD had not fired at another SD at some point in the past.

I'm not sure if he's right, but there's a decent chance. We know the last significant action Battlefleet saw was the Battle of Farley's Crossing. RFC's 2004 infodump on that gave me the impression that the "less than a dozen ships of the wall" involved were all on the SLN side.

If so then Battlefleet has no direct SD vs SD actions. I'm assuming that no SDF within the League would have had an SD vs SD action.

And I seem to recall another pre-war deployment, but I'm failing to turn up a reference. But again I don't have the impression of SD combat.


We don't know much about the Andies
But aside from Manticore or Haven there's a shortage of people out their way that they could have gotten into a shooting war with.


The real question (in my mind) would be whether any of the single planet systems Haven picked off before 1905 had managed to build or buy some wallers. That's probably the best chance for an SD vs SD (or at least SD vs DN) fight...

But basically it seems to boil down to, very few navies even have SDs, and in the few hundred years they've superceeded BBs those navies don't seem to have had much chance to fight each other.


I think there have been several superdreadnought v. superdreadnought actions in the past before the 1905 start of the First Manticore-Havenite War because of implied text-ev.

There were numerous mentions of the formality of major engagements between wallers before 1905. This drove the RMN's Jeune Ecole led by Hemphill to seek out technological innovations to break the strategic indecisive nature of tactical combat. It was assumed by the RMN, the IAN, the PRHN, and the SLN that most combat between wallers would be indecisive as the losing side could always roll wedge and run away unless there was a target that had to be defended (usually the home system or a junction) at which point an energy slug fest would ensue.

Sure, maybe this knowledge came out of thousands of man years in simulators and fleet problems. However, I'm betting that there were enough navies with a few squadron of the wall or even a few squadrons of old battleships that had clashed in the previous 250 years to produce that as a widespread accepted truth.
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Re: The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.
Post by SWM   » Thu Mar 20, 2014 10:03 am

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Brigade XO wrote:If memory serves, Beowulf passed the information to Manticore well before Tsang showed up at Beowulf. Then there was that odd meeting of the SLN officer sent to Beowulf to discuss some sensitive information at a much lower than you would expect grade level for the SLN officer. I had the impression that Tsang was expecting the BSDF officer in charge when she got there to have no idea she was comming and was suprised to find such a senior person as did answer being the one to take her call from an SD's flag deck.

You are correct that Beowulf passed the information to Manticore well before Tsang showed up at Beowulf. But the League doesn't know exactly when Beowulf leaked it to Manticore. Tsang certainly should not have been surprised that Beowulf already knew about it, because the SLN specifically told Beowulf in advance and asked permission (which was refused) to send the fleet through, well before Tsang arrived. There is no reason for the League to think that Beowulf warned Manticore even before Beowulf was officially told about the mission.
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