Post League Eridani

kzt wrote:No, the stealth homing missiles were in fact untrackable. They knew they were out there but nobody was able to get a firing solution on them. Which is how they got the ship.

Funny how the SLN didn’t buy them...

Jonathan_S wrote:But the book is clear that in that case they were only untraceable because someone had managed to get a homing beacon onto the targets which let them attack completely passively. When explaining why the SLN didn't buy them AoV said "The SLN Weapons Division, however, had taken one look at them, yawned, and passed, for they were useful only as ambush weapons against an unsuspecting foe. Worse, their slow speed made them sitting ducks when their seekers were forced to go active over the last portion of their attack run."

Hasan sidestepped the need for the seekers to go active by making them even more limited use by requiring that the foe also pre-planted homing beacon.

cthia wrote:Reminds me of using the moon stone as a homing beacon in Yeltsin. Which, btw, I always thought it was quite interesting that such a tactic could be used in the Honorverse. Done to a freighter, yes. But done to a warship or a royal yacht in the Honorverse surprises me. These are warships that routinely lock down all emissions. Its like submarines failing to detect the emissions of homing beacons smuggled aboard -- unless programmed to activate at a certain time.

The operation codenamed Hassan 2 (after Hassan-i Sabbāh, founder of the order known as assassins?) to decapitate the heads of state for Grayson and Manticore involved stealth missiles launched by Masadan fanatics that followed homing signals from devices hidden in "memory stones" given to the visitors by Mueller. It is unclear how the signal was not detected and how the signal was strong enough to be seen by the missiles given metal shielding and the wedges as interference. The attack is described in chapter 44 of Ashes of Victory.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Agreed. But the SLN presumably wasn't interested in weapons that were only useful for ambush attacks on unsuspecting warships or hitting non-maneuvering infrastructure.

Really? They spent a lot of time and money developing a tool they used to do that at Beowulf, instead of buying a COTS solution and making minor modifications.

Sorry. I should have been clear that at that time the SLN wasn't interested in such a weapon.

As for the weapon used against Beowulf wasn't that Technodyne (who actually got feed it by the MAlign) basically walking in the door and saying "Hey we've had an idea for a nifty ultra-long ranged multi-stage missile; we made the first stage a recon drone. Want to buy some?"
The SLN didn't spend much time developing it; though they did spend time building them.

Frankly if the (AFAIK unamed) arms merchant who'd tried to sell them on the stealth attack drones almost 10 years before had been the ones to come back through that door and offer the same tech as an ultra-long range ambush missile the SLN might well have now bought those instead.
I'd already said those would have been capable of an infrastructure attack like the one attempted at Beowulf.


OTOH Hasta seems like it should have more inherent capability against warships than those stealth drones. The drone stage can stealthily build up significant base velocity giving then the missile final stage, with its much higher acceleration combined with that base velocity, a better chance of punching through the point defense zones than the slower attack drones. So if presented with both even after the SLN realized it needed to go with raiding where GA forces largely weren't they might have picked Hasta over the older design. But absent Hasta I suspect if they'd remembered or been re-presented the older design they'd have now snapped it up given the changed circumstances.

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:[
The EE needs to be redefined to explicitly forbid attacks on orbital habitats. I would submit that wholesale destruction of industrial platforms should also be prohibited. Industrialized civilizations are utterly dependant on advanced technology to support their populations. Honor Harrington demonstrated her understanding by NOT nuking Sol systems Solar Power Satellytes.

“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace.”

Sherman broke every "rule" of war that was in place, and should be considered a war criminal instead of a war hero. He executed PoWs in retaliation. That alone should make him reviled.

He is a perfect example of "the winner writes the history books".

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The EE needs to be redefined to explicitly forbid attacks on orbital habitats. I would submit that wholesale destruction of industrial platforms should also be prohibited. Industrialized civilizations are utterly dependant on advanced technology to support their populations. Honor Harrington demonstrated her understanding by NOT nuking Sol systems Solar Power Satellytes.

kzt wrote:“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace.”

Isilith wrote:Sherman broke every "rule" of war that was in place, and should be considered a war criminal instead of a war hero. He executed PoWs in retaliation. That alone should make him reviled.

He is a perfect example of "the winner writes the history books".

That cannot be true, because most history books written after the war were done by Southerners; remember the "Lost Cause", fighting for "states rights, not slavery" and a local favorite "Lincoln is a war criminal", all promulgated to disguise that the South's "peculiar institution" was the leading cause of the disruption.

From Wikipedia on the Lieber Code, the rules of war during Sherman's March:

Both the Lieber Code and the Hague Convention of 1907, which took much of the Lieber Code and wrote it into the international treaty law, included practices that would be considered illegal or extremely questionable by today's standards. In the event of the violation of the laws of war by an enemy, the Code permitted reprisal (by musketry) against the enemy's recently captured POWs; it permitted the summary execution (by musketry) of spies, saboteurs, francs-tireurs, and guerrilla forces, if caught in the act of carrying out their missions. (These allowable practices were later abolished by the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, following World War II, which saw these practices in the hands of totalitarian states used as the rule rather than the exception to such.)

No, spies are not treated as pow. If you are not a uniformed member of a military organization (and uniformed is treated pretty loosely) and bear arms against another force you are an unlawful combatant. Which is pretty much outside the pretextion of the laws of war because you are violating the laws of war.

kzt wrote:No, spies are not treated as pow. If you are not a uniformed member of a military organization (and uniformed is treated pretty loosely) and bear arms against another force you are an unlawful combatant. Which is pretty much outside the pretextion of the laws of war because you are violating the laws of war.

To what statement are you saying "no"? The Wikipedia snippet is not equating a POW to a spy. Those are separate statements, which stare authorities were allowed to execute either in specific circumstances.

tlb wrote:That cannot be true, because most history books written after the war were done by Southerners; remember the "Lost Cause", fighting for "states rights, not slavery" and a local favorite "Lincoln is a war criminal", all promulgated to disguise that the South's "peculiar institution" was the leading cause of the disruption.

Also systematically sabotaged Grant's reputation, since they couldn't manage to do it to Lincoln, and he, y'know, tried to enforce civil rights laws.

Ah, the old Law of War debate. So, regardless of your ethical view, they actually did a study on this. I don’t recall exactly, but odds were it was RAND (isn’t it always?). Anyhow, what they basically found was that

- when big powers fight over big things, the “Law of War” gets remarkably flexible. Not irrelevant, but flexible.

-when big powers fight limited wars, the LoW is more likely to be honored, particularly in those rules concerning treatment of personnel and ensuring escalation doesn’t happen.

-when a big power fights a small power, it’s a toss up. The smaller power almost never obeys the LoW (the big guys wrote the rules after all), and the big power only o yes what it considers socially applicable.

-when two small powers fight, the LoW pretty much ceases to exist.


All of which is relevant because in a post league world, we’re looking at a lot more small and mid sized conflicts.

tlb wrote:That cannot be true, because most history books written after the war were done by Southerners; remember the "Lost Cause", fighting for "states rights, not slavery" and a local favorite "Lincoln is a war criminal", all promulgated to disguise that the South's "peculiar institution" was the leading cause of the disruption.

Any other totally irrelevant red herrings you would like to toss out?

Sherman had PoWs, some captured in different states, hung ( note no musketry, what a load of BS that attempt to justify it was ). As well as hanging, he had some shot by firing squad. He broke the laws of war, he was barbaric and punished those innocent of the acts that infuriated him.

If he had been a general of an enemy of the United States, he would be reviled to this very day.

tlb wrote:That cannot be true, because most history books written after the war were done by Southerners; remember the "Lost Cause", fighting for "states rights, not slavery" and a local favorite "Lincoln is a war criminal", all promulgated to disguise that the South's "peculiar institution" was the leading cause of the disruption.

Isilith wrote:Any other totally irrelevant red herrings you would like to toss out?

Sherman had PoWs, some captured in different states, hung ( note no musketry, what a load of BS that attempt to justify it was ). As well as hanging, he had some shot by firing squad. He broke the laws of war, he was barbaric and punished those innocent of the acts that infuriated him.

If he had been a general of an enemy of the United States, he would be reviled to this very day.

I am mainly disputing the statement that the Civil War was a perfect example of the winners writing the history. What you are really saying is that the winners get to apply the rules; Gen. Sherman was a bastard, but he was our bastard.

Federal war crimes in the Civil War is the subject of an entire website. Of course it makes no mention of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest's actions at Fort Pillow, but Southern historians dispute whether a war crime was really committed there (I do not believe he was prosecuted).