Destroying Gravitic Arrays

Someone mentioned that now that there were MDMs, system gravitic arrays are susceptible to a missile strike from outside the hyper limit of a star. Yet, I have to wonder just how effective such a strike would be. It is not like it is a solid structure. So any laserhead missile would have a very poor chance of hitting anything except the control node or nodes. A contact nuke would destroy a portion of the array, but how much? Since the dissipation of the plasma from the explosion is an inverse cube function, there would not be much physical damage beyond a few tens of kilometers from the center of the blast.

Also, there should be expansion/contraction joints built into the system to allow for tidal stresses from astronomical objects such as planets and moons. These should dampen or mitigate any shockwaves from the point of impact. While I can see the array in a secondary system being totally destroyed, the bigger arrays such as those at Manticore and Haven should be repairable fairly quickly. Am I missing something?

KNick wrote:Someone mentioned that now that there were MDMs, system gravitic arrays are susceptible to a missile strike from outside the hyper limit of a star. Yet, I have to wonder just how effective such a strike would be. It is not like it is a solid structure. So any laserhead missile would have a very poor chance of hitting anything except the control node or nodes. A contact nuke would destroy a portion of the array, but how much? Since the dissipation of the plasma from the explosion is an inverse cube function, there would not be much physical damage beyond a few tens of kilometers from the center of the blast.

Also, there should be expansion/contraction joints built into the system to allow for tidal stresses from astronomical objects such as planets and moons. These should dampen or mitigate any shockwaves from the point of impact. While I can see the array in a secondary system being totally destroyed, the bigger arrays such as those at Manticore and Haven should be repairable fairly quickly. Am I missing something?

I think that the best way for an attacker with MDMs to attack a system gravitic array would be to maneuver the launching ship to a point near the array (in MDM terms), so that you have the correct firing angle, then fire off one pod of missiles at it and have those spread-out missiles use their wedges as brooms to tear up the arrays structure as they pass it. You wouldn't even need warheads, although you might want them to explode in contact nuke mode near the end of the attack run. (This assumes that the arrays are shaped like giant pancakes.)

If the arrays are instead shaped more like sea urchins, you wouldn't need to maneuver at all. You would probably want to fire a pod of MDMs at the central connecting point and would want the warheads to go off in contact nuke mode (literally in physical contact to maximize damage from shock wave propagation) when they hit.

I just asked a question in the first technical mission to bolthole thread concerning the arrays. My concern is whether they are susceptible to old-fashioned nukes in an attempt to blind the sensors sort of like what Shannon Foraker's triple-ripple did to Manticore's sensors?

My impression from reading about them is that they are more like spider-webs than pancakes. Pancakes implies a much solider structure that is mostly material. Spider-webs implies much more space between components. I have always favored the idea of comparing it to a radio telescope network. Lots of individual nodes reporting to a central control station. Perhaps someone could clear that up (yes, I mean you BuNine).

cthia wrote:I just asked a question in the first technical mission to bolthole thread concerning the arrays. My concern is whether they are susceptible to old-fashioned nukes in an attempt to blind the sensors sort of like what Shannon Foraker's triple-ripple did to Manticore's sensors?

No, they shouldn't be. Nukes don't seem to produce a grav signature. The triple ripple also doesn't really work that well, it's like laying smoke against radar directed gunnery. The grids also don't provide real-time combat data, they provide data to perimeter control, which presumably merges the data from the multiple grids together to provide targeting. If you can directly target the arrays you should just run them over with a mdm wedge.

I still don't understand why the MAN didn't obliterate the Manticore and Grayson sensor grids as part of their attack.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I just asked a question in the first technical mission to bolthole thread concerning the arrays. My concern is whether they are susceptible to old-fashioned nukes in an attempt to blind the sensors sort of like what Shannon Foraker's triple-ripple did to Manticore's sensors?

No, they shouldn't be. Nukes don't seem to produce a grav signature. The triple ripple also doesn't really work that well, it's like laying smoke against radar directed gunnery. The grids also don't provide real-time combat data, they provide data to perimeter control, which presumably merges the data from the multiple grids together to provide targeting. If you can directly target the arrays you should just run them over with a mdm wedge.

I still don't understand why the MAN didn't obliterate the Manticore and Grayson sensor grids as part of their attack.

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the triple-ripple-effect principle worked by way of EMP...

wiki for convenience:

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy. Such a pulse may occur in the form of a radiated, electric or magnetic field or conducted electrical current depending on the source, and may be natural or man-made. The term "electromagnetic pulse" is commonly abbreviated to EMP, pronounced by saying the letters separately (E-M-P).

EMP interference is generally damaging to electronic equipment, and at higher energy levels a powerful EMP event such as a lightning strike can damage physical objects such as buildings and aircraft structures. The management of EMP effects is an important branch of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering.

The damaging effects of high-energy EMP have been used to create EMP weapons. These are typically divided into nuclear and non-nuclear devices. Such weapons, both real and fictional, have gained traction in popular culture.

Now I know systems can be hardened against such an attack. The US supposedly has hardened certain systems. But it seems other parts of a system, as in the sensor and fire control of electronic warfare platforms must always remain vulnerable. In fact, I think Manticore's first solution was to program the missiles and control drones to dive at the appropriate time, diverting sensors away from EMP. Crude, but effective. Large gravitic system arrays wouldn't have that option.

cthia wrote:I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the triple-ripple-effect principle worked by way of EMP...

There is no EMP in deep space. Well, if you are (in Honorverse terms) really, really close the xray and gamma radiation will induce EMP effects (system generated EMP), but you can't get that close to a combat ship. Due the inverse square law the radiation intensity drops really fast.

You also don't get a fireball, as the fireball is from the weapon xrays interacting with the atmosphere (air is highly effective absorber of xrays and hence gets heated to incandescence). In deep space you get a really, really bright xray source and a bright visual and gamma source, which then expands at 10,000 km/sec, so rapidly becomes undetectable.

So no, I have no idea how this is supposed to work. I think this is part of why David formed Bu9....

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the triple-ripple-effect principle worked by way of EMP...

There is no EMP in deep space. Well, if you are (in Honorverse terms) really, really close the xray and gamma radiation will induce EMP effects (system generated EMP), but you can't get that close to a combat ship. Due the inverse square law the radiation intensity drops really fast.

You also don't get a fireball, as the fireball is from the weapon xrays interacting with the atmosphere (air is highly effective absorber of xrays and hence gets heated to incandescence). In deep space you get a really, really bright xray source and a bright visual and gamma source, which then expands at 10,000 km/sec, so rapidly becomes undetectable.

So no, I have no idea how this is supposed to work. I think this is part of why David formed Bu9....

Thanks for this post!
Of course I had no idea.
My niece is going to loooove this!

Thanks again.

Oh, I was considering the way Tepes ship's sensors were blinded from the blast, that allowed Honor and crew to escape. Of course, that blast was of very close proximity. And I thought they used nukes.

KNick wrote:My impression from reading about them is that they are more like spider-webs than pancakes. Pancakes implies a much solider structure that is mostly material. Spider-webs implies much more space between components. I have always favored the idea of comparing it to a radio telescope network. Lots of individual nodes reporting to a central control station. Perhaps someone could clear that up (yes, I mean you BuNine).

I've always imagined them to be something like the recent mission that mapped the lunar gravity field - two really simple satellites that used a laser ranging device to detect the subtle shifts in relative orbital velocity due to unevenness in the gravitational field.

There are advantages to having a few thousand relatively simple and relatively dumb nodes separated by hundreds if not thousands of kilometers and connected only by the beams of the ranging lasers.

Given sufficiently sophisticated analytical software, their positioning doesn't have to be all that good, either. In fact, there are real advantages to just sticking them in orbit and leaving them there until they have to be picked up for servicing.

KNick wrote:My impression from reading about them is that they are more like spider-webs than pancakes. Pancakes implies a much solider structure that is mostly material. Spider-webs implies much more space between components. I have always favored the idea of comparing it to a radio telescope network. Lots of individual nodes reporting to a central control station. Perhaps someone could clear that up (yes, I mean you BuNine).

Don't look at me. I have even less of a clue than you do.