THE LENNYS ARE COMING! THE LENNYS ARE COMING!

Louis R wrote:One of the major issues with spider-drive ships is that they have to start giving themselves away once they begin firing at any target operating fire-confusion defenses.

No, they don't. Seeking weapons simply need to be told where the target is and they will go find it. As the graser torpedo is very large it presumably has a rather capable computer systems and passive sensors. And there is the minor issue that David to mention to us that the MAN has more than just grasers mounted on the torpedo chassis. Exactly what this is I don't know, but it probably won't be very nice.

Plus the effective range and ensuing time delay means that it is impossible to influence the effect of an engagement past a fairly close range. A missile attack sequence takes a few seconds and the control loop is minutes. So the launching ship basically gets to wait to hear the news about what happened.

kzt wrote:

Louis R wrote:One of the major issues with spider-drive ships is that they have to start giving themselves away once they begin firing at any target operating fire-confusion defenses.

No, they don't. Seeking weapons simply need to be told where the target is and they will go find it. As the graser torpedo is very large it presumably has a rather capable computer systems and passive sensors. And there is the minor issue that David to mention to us that the MAN has more than just grasers mounted on the torpedo chassis. Exactly what this is I don't know, but it probably won't be very nice.

Plus the effective range and ensuing time delay means that it is impossible to influence the effect of an engagement past a fairly close range. A missile attack sequence takes a few seconds and the control loop is minutes. So the launching ship basically gets to wait to hear the news about what happened.

Indeed. It is large. However, most of its mass is not used for propulsion as is RMN missiles. Textev gives it that most of its mass is used for goodies. Scale up accordingly what Sonja can stuff into something that size.

I'm thinking that the missiles are capable of long distance strikes. Being able to stuff lots of the same advanced tech as Apollo -- with much more mass to play with are able to set and forget autonomous deployment. My guess.

WWII German subs tried to solve the problem with manned (NPI) torpedoes at one point.

cthia wrote:Scale up accordingly what Sonja can stuff into something that size.

Not even close. being VERY generous, comparable to what Shannon Forracker could manage before the GA was formed. The MAlign isn't close to what Manticore can manage for miniaturization and power budgets, and probably not up to HAven or the IAN pre-alliance with Manticore.

cthia wrote:I'm thinking that the missiles are capable of long distance strikes. Being able to stuff lots of the same advanced tech as Apollo -- with much more mass to play with are able to set and forget autonomous deployment. My guess.

Most of the "same advanced tech as Apollo" is Manticore/Ghostrider tech and the MAlign has nothing close.


Now, if you're talking about what Manticore could stuff into a Spider Drive chassis (as soon as they get a working example) the the sky's the limit. With Ghost Rider tech, they would have the power budget for truly amazing offensive and defensive toys.

The MAlign managed three seconds of operation from a medium sized graser. With Ghost Rider power budgets, improved Grav Lensing, and GR Miniaturization Manticore/GA could probably manage at least a Shrike-class Graser and possibly even a SD-class Graser. That's for an offensive version.

For a Defensive version, imagine the entire ECM Suite from a modern BC automated and stuffed into a spider drive chassis... You wouldn't even need much of the stealth features in that suite, because you would have no wedge to cover.

A Recon version could replace a lot of the wedge-covering of a GR-drone with more FTL Comm or more sensors...

But...

The MAlign can't do any of that until they crack Manticore's miniaturization tech and FTL/comm tech.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm thinking that the missiles are capable of long distance strikes. Being able to stuff lots of the same advanced tech as Apollo -- with much more mass to play with are able to set and forget autonomous deployment. My guess.

Most of the "same advanced tech as Apollo" is Manticore/Ghostrider tech and the MAlign has nothing close.


Now, if you're talking about what Manticore could stuff into a Spider Drive chassis (as soon as they get a working example) the the sky's the limit. With Ghost Rider tech, they would have the power budget for truly amazing offensive and defensive toys.

The MAlign managed three seconds of operation from a medium sized graser. With Ghost Rider power budgets, improved Grav Lensing, and GR Miniaturization Manticore/GA could probably manage at least a Shrike-class Graser and possibly even a SD-class Graser. That's for an offensive version.

For a Defensive version, imagine the entire ECM Suite from a modern BC automated and stuffed into a spider drive chassis... You wouldn't even need much of the stealth features in that suite, because you would have no wedge to cover.

A Recon version could replace a lot of the wedge-covering of a GR-drone with more FTL Comm or more sensors...

But...

The MAlign can't do any of that until they crack Manticore's miniaturization tech and FTL/comm tech.

Even with Manticoran miniaturization, it is doubtful that a graser torpedo could mount a BC or SD sized graser, due to limitations of the laws of physics on a large scale, where miniaturization doesn't help. While the Ghost Rider miniature fusion plants might solve the power input problem, you are still left with the laws of physics limitations not allowing 100% efficiency:

Mission of Honor, Chapter 28 wrote:For all its size, it was also a slow weapon. It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon. As compensation, however, its drive had almost as much endurance as most of the galaxy’s recon drones, which gave it an impressive absolute range. And a large percentage of the torpedo’s volume had been reserved for systems which had nothing at all to do with propulsion. Whereas the Royal Manticoran Navy had concentrated on improving the efficiency of its standard laser heads, Daniel Detweiler’s R&D staff had taken another approach. They’d figured out how to squeeze what amounted to a cruiser-grade graser projector into something small enough to deploy independently.
The power of the torpedo’s graser wasn’t remotely comparable to that of the weapon mounted by current-generation Shrikes, yet it was more powerful than any single bomb-pumped laser head. Of course, there was only one of it in each torpedo, but R&D had decided the new weapon could sacrifice the laser head’s multi-shot capability, because it offered three highly significant advantages of its own. First, it was just as hard to pick up as a spider-drive ship, and the best antimissile defense in the universe couldn’t hit something it didn’t know was coming. Second, the torpedo carried extraordinarily capable sensors and targeting systems and an AI which approached the capability of the one Sonja Hemphill’s people had fitted into the Apollo control missile. As a consequence, its long-range hit probability was significantly higher on a per-beam basis than anything short of Apollo itself. And, third, a bomb-pulsed laser had a burst endurance of barely five thousandths of a second; a laser torpedo’s graser’s endurance was a full three seconds . . . ​and it had a burn-through range against most sidewalls of over fifty thousand kilometers.
Fitting all that into something the size of a torpedo had required some drastic engineering compromises, and there’d never been any possibility of squeezing in the power supply for more than a single shot. Even if there had been, no one could build a graser that small and that powerful which could survive the power bleed and waste heat of actually firing. But that was fine with the MAN’s designers and tacticians. In fact, they were just as happy every graser torpedo would irrevocably and totally destroy itself in the moment it fired, since they weren’t looking forward to the day one of their enemies finally captured one intact and figured out how to duplicate it.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

cthia wrote:Scale up accordingly to what Sonja can stuff into something that size.

Weird Harold wrote:Not even close. being VERY generous, comparable to what Shannon Forracker could manage before the GA was formed. The MAlign isn't close to what Manticore can manage for miniaturization and power budgets, and probably not up to HAven or the IAN pre-alliance with Manticore.

cthia wrote:I'm thinking that the missiles are capable of long distance strikes. Being able to stuff lots of the same advanced tech as Apollo -- with much more mass to play with are able to set and forget autonomous deployment. My guess.

Weird Harold wrote:Most of the "same advanced tech as Apollo" is Manticore/Ghostrider tech and the MAlign has nothing close.


Now, if you're talking about what Manticore could stuff into a Spider Drive chassis (as soon as they get a working example) the the sky's the limit. With Ghost Rider tech, they would have the power budget for truly amazing offensive and defensive toys.

The MAlign managed three seconds of operation from a medium sized graser. With Ghost Rider power budgets, improved Grav Lensing, and GR Miniaturization Manticore/GA could probably manage at least a Shrike-class Graser and possibly even a SD-class Graser. That's for an offensive version.

For a Defensive version, imagine the entire ECM Suite from a modern BC automated and stuffed into a spider drive chassis... You wouldn't even need much of the stealth features in that suite, because you would have no wedge to cover.

A Recon version could replace a lot of the wedge-covering of a GR-drone with more FTL Comm or more sensors...

But...

The MAlign can't do any of that until they crack Manticore's miniaturization tech and FTL/comm tech.

Thanks for the correction of illogic. I 'suppose' it would be closer to Havenite tech.

I tentatively quote 'suppose' because that may be debatable as well. It could go either way. It's a good question to debate. Would the MAlign tech base fall short of the Havenite base tech or somewhere in between Haven's and Manticore's?

But yes, my brain was salivating over what Sonja could achieve with a similar magnitude of excess mass.

George J. Smith wrote:

cthia wrote:
Snipp...


Also an exercise of who will get closer to the actual capabilities of the Lennys after their initial workout trials, some time in 2018.

I don't think the LDs will be ready when the last book is delivered, I think rfc will take the Honorverse arc back to what his original concept was, the MAlign will be dealt with by Honors children and their peers, and that is when the LDs will come to the fore.

1. Prometheus is coming (Torch of Freedom).

2. If a preemptive strike is launched against your enemies infastructure, you have a window of opportunity that starts to close once that infastructure has been fully repaired, and closes completely when the manpower has been retrained and regained lost experience.

No way in heck can the MAN wait another 20 years. The effects of OB will have long worn off.

Indeed, thanks to the GA, the window is even shorter than initially projected due to Haven and Beowulf helping the rebuilding project, and Haven's repatriation of the Grendlesbane techs gives a partially experienced workforce to start from scratch.

3. Prometheus is coming.

George J. Smith wrote:

cthia wrote:
Snipp...


Also an exercise of who will get closer to the actual capabilities of the Lennys after their initial workout trials, some time in 2018.

I don't think the LDs will be ready when the last book is delivered, I think rfc will take the Honorverse arc back to what his original concept was, the MAlign will be dealt with by Honors children and their peers, and that is when the LDs will come to the fore.

WLBjork wrote:1. Prometheus is coming (Torch of Freedom).

2. If a preemptive strike is launched against your enemies infastructure, you have a window of opportunity that starts to close once that infastructure has been fully repaired, and closes completely when the manpower has been retrained and regained lost experience.

No way in heck can the MAN wait another 20 years. The effects of OB will have long worn off.

Indeed, thanks to the GA, the window is even shorter than initially projected due to Haven and Beowulf helping the rebuilding project, and Haven's repatriation of the Grendlesbane techs gives a partially experienced workforce to start from scratch.

3. Prometheus is coming.

Thanks for filling a serious void in my inbox.

This is quite interesting. I don't seem to remember it. My unreliable Wiki informant gives these details...

Wiki wrote:Operation Prometheus was the code name for the general offensive of the Mesan Alignment's forces, to be implemented some time after Operation Oyster Bay hit the Manticoran Alliance.

Planned for centuries, it was supposed to crush the Alignment's enemies and bring about the rise of the Renaissance Factor, a new society where each individual's place was to be decided by his or her genetic "value". Even most Mesans were unaware of its purpose and scale. (CS2)

"Some time after" is just so vague. Sounds like its rolling in with the thunder just over the horizon.

Edit:
Prometheus is in Torch of Freedom as you've pointed out. It was in my inbox.

George J. Smith wrote:

cthia wrote:
Snipp...


Also an exercise of who will get closer to the actual capabilities of the Lennys after their initial workout trials, some time in 2018.

I don't think the LDs will be ready when the last book is delivered, I think rfc will take the Honorverse arc back to what his original concept was, the MAlign will be dealt with by Honors children and their peers, and that is when the LDs will come to the fore.

WLBjork wrote:1. Prometheus is coming (Torch of Freedom).

2. If a preemptive strike is launched against your enemies infastructure, you have a window of opportunity that starts to close once that infastructure has been fully repaired, and closes completely when the manpower has been retrained and regained lost experience.

No way in heck can the MAN wait another 20 years. The effects of OB will have long worn off.

Indeed, thanks to the GA, the window is even shorter than initially projected due to Haven and Beowulf helping the rebuilding project, and Haven's repatriation of the Grendlesbane techs gives a partially experienced workforce to start from scratch.

3. Prometheus is coming.

This makes an awful lot of sense. Raw common sense. As raw as the Onion itself.

MALIGN WEAPONRY THAT SHOULD NOT BE NAMED (MWTSNBN)

cthia wrote:Scale up accordingly what Sonja can stuff into something that size.

Weird Harold wrote:Not even close. being VERY generous, comparable to what Shannon Forracker could manage before the GA was formed. The MAlign isn't close to what Manticore can manage for miniaturization and power budgets, and probably not up to HAven or the IAN pre-alliance with Manticore.

cthia wrote:I'm thinking that the missiles are capable of long distance strikes. Being able to stuff lots of the same advanced tech as Apollo -- with much more mass to play with are able to set and forget autonomous deployment. My guess.

Weird Harold wrote:Most of the "same advanced tech as Apollo" is Manticore/Ghostrider tech and the MAlign has nothing close.


Now, if you're talking about what Manticore could stuff into a Spider Drive chassis (as soon as they get a working example) the the sky's the limit. With Ghost Rider tech, they would have the power budget for truly amazing offensive and defensive toys.

The MAlign managed three seconds of operation from a medium sized graser. With Ghost Rider power budgets, improved Grav Lensing, and GR Miniaturization Manticore/GA could probably manage at least a Shrike-class Graser and possibly even a SD-class Graser. That's for an offensive version.

For a Defensive version, imagine the entire ECM Suite from a modern BC automated and stuffed into a spider drive chassis... You wouldn't even need much of the stealth features in that suite, because you would have no wedge to cover.

A Recon version could replace a lot of the wedge-covering of a GR-drone with more FTL Comm or more sensors...

But...

The MAlign can't do any of that until they crack Manticore's miniaturization tech and FTL/comm tech.

A lot of interesting stuff here.

I've a thought. RFC could take things in a whole nother direction ripe with potential "tum te tums."

What if the MAlign chose to tackle the problem from another angle - well within their capabilities which is also in keeping with who they are. Instead of trying to crack Manticore's miniaturization tech and bridge the gap in capabilities, they could just as easily close the gap or even surpass the capabilities of Apollo by developing the next generation in smart missiles by developing the "truly intelligent" missile.

What if the MAlign, with their superior intellect, develop a completely new paradigm in computer capability which comes from the programming language itself coupled with a twist. What if their tech is based around a completely new and advanced computer system that itself is capable of more advanced thought.

Present day Earth is experimenting with genetic programming and genetic algorithms. From wiki...

Genetic programming
In artificial intelligence, genetic programming (GP) is a technique whereby computer programs are encoded as a set of genes that are then modified (evolved) using an evolutionary algorithm (often a genetic algorithm). The result is a computer program able to perform well in a predefined task.

Yes, I'm going there.

Where we are barely scratching the surface and getting our toes wet presently, the MAlign has cornered the market on genetic research. What if they've found a way to defeat the problem of Godel and his Incompleteness Theorems and the halting problem to boot? By supplanting the restrictive vector with one that isn't prone to the limitation - the human mind. What if the MAlign are able to enslave the human brain itself and make it subservient to a computer system? The human brain is not governed by Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems or the halting problem. And the power budget needed to run a computer as this would be greatly decreased, as the complexity of the system would decrease. Yet the specialized computing power would be astronomical.

Alphas. What is possible for them to accomplish with a near infinitely powerful computer? What of one with the advantage of truly-human thinking? One which has solved the limitations of Godel and the halting problem by incorporating truly thinking genetic DNA micro chips - interfaced with the human mind. Truly a slave. What if the MAlign goes to the other not so subtle extreme and just enslaves the human mind?

Would you diehards still not think that is an aberration of science? An abortion? An over stepping of the boundaries of immorality?

Each missile is a one time use only of a human mind. And the mainframe is a similar design used in CIC. Think of the TDC (Torpedo Data Computer) which revolutionized US submarine warfare installed aboard the USS Pompanito naval sub.

What is possible when your tech is not limited by moral constraint, or mercy? Constraint and mercy for yourself and your own people as well as constraint and mercy for other peoples outside of your own. I've asked the question several times and briefly discussed it with another poster. What are some of the more subtle as well as extreme uses of MAlign tech that was brought back with Alice from Wonderland? What is really down the rabbit hole?


I don't know what they've found on the other side of the bridge. The MAlign are working beyond a certain/specified point on the genetic line.

It could truly be an aberration. The MAign's own WTSNBN.

At any rate, I'm excited about the Lenny's. There is a thread in Free Range titled "Favorite Ships." Mine is the USS Virginia (SSN-774) nuclear sub. But it has always been the Uboats. The German Type VII is a very interestingly historical piece of navy hardware. Their tactics as well. The wolfpacks.

Jonathan_S mentioned that the Lenny's may be used as the submarines from WWII to present.

Those subs were a dangerous force for both the US in their Silent Service campaign against the Japanese and also a hammer in German hands who very nearly starved Her Majesty's Navy.

cthia wrote:A lot of interesting stuff here.

I've a thought. RFC could take things in a whole nother direction ripe with potential "tum te tums."

What if the MAlign chose to tackle the problem from another angle - well within their capabilities which is also in keeping with who they are. Instead of trying to crack Manticore's miniaturization tech and bridge the gap in capabilities, they could just as easily close the gap or even surpass the capabilities of Apollo by developing the next generation in smart missiles by developing the "truly intelligent" missile.

What if the MAlign, with their superior intellect, develop a completely new paradigm in computer capability which comes from the programming language itself coupled with a twist. What if their tech is based around a completely new and advanced computer system that itself is capable of more advanced thought.

Certainly there are some possibilities there; but RFC has been fairly clear that, like high tech aliens, he doesn't want truly sentient AIs in the Honorverse. (He has other series for that) However even without human brain (or better) level sentient thought there's still plenty of room for further improvements to onboard 'intelligent systems'.

But I'd guess that compute power alone won't be enough to make a revolutionary breakthrough in long range missile fire; not without some kind of networking or flocking behavior to let the missiles coordinate attacks (which the Apollo control missile does in a limited fashion for it's 8 slaved missiles) - but there's a slight risk that once missiles start talking to each other, rather than just their launch ships, that it opens up the possibility of hacking into that ad-hoc network and screwing with the missiles. Plus you don't want their emissions to be easily tracked or it simplifies defense against them.
So I think what you'd want is a highly jamming resistant LPI (low probbility of intercept) network; which could let the missiles do several things to improve their capabilities:
1) The missiles or torps could receive updates directly from recon drones (quite possibly spider powered recon drones, or even manned Ghosts that lack the tactical section and fire control links to directly handle terminal attack guidance of large missile swarms)

2) The missiles can act as sparse arrays to improve their collective view of the targets - useful since the sensors you can fit onto the nose of a missile or torp are necessarily much smaller and less sensative than the giant shipboard sensor arrays. That lets them keep an (ever improving) eye on the target from launch to terminal attack run so guard against (as much as possible) decoy shell games during their long flight.

3) Initial waves could send info back to follow up waves on the ECM they saw, whether or not they sucessfully looked through that ECM, the target's current emissions signature and location, etc. That would give the computers on the follow on waves timely information from which to update their attack plans. The vastly reduced latency should compensate quite a lot for the fact that at any given computer tech level you can afford to put more data storage and processing on a multi-megaton ship than you can on a 10 ton missile.

So a more capable computer, yes, but also fed with more and better information to apply that power to.