cthia wrote:Cardones trick of using Saladin's ECM was genius. But if I'm understanding it correctly, that shouldn't have been possible. Wouldn't have been possible if Saladin had an experienced crew and ECM had not been functioning under computer control. I think ECM frequencies would have been constantly changing - modulating? Exactly what would have been going on with Saladin's ECM if it hadn't been operating in a canned mode?
Yes, they were constantly changing. The problem was that the computer-controlled mode was limited. It created a long complicated variation in frequency modulation, and then cycled it. The cycle was long (it might have been an hour or more, given the length of the battle), but it did cycle. It was never intended to be used the way the Masadan crew did. It was intended to give a base modulation which could then be constantly tweaked by trained specialists to prevent what Rafe did. The specialists would turn it into a completely unpredictable modulation.
Once Rafe recognized that there was a repeated cycle in the pattern, he could program the missiles to
predict the pattern, to adjust sensors in the same pattern to improve their own lock, and to even predict what penaids settings would get the missiles
through the sidewalls, which were also cycling in the same pattern.
Something I've always wanted to know. Why can't nukes get through? If it's the size, then Honorverse tech can't engineer them so that they aren't any larger than laserheads?
Because of the sidewalls. Sidewalls will normally rip apart any material object passing through them. Sidewalls ripple and modulate in a pattern intended to be unpredictable to the enemy but predictable to the ship itself, so that the ship sensors and weapons can get out but enemy shots can't get in.
So-called contact nukes are equipped with penaids--penetration aids. They are intended to counter the effects of the sidewall, creating a hole for the missile to slip through, so that the warhead can go off
between the sidewalls, close enough to the ship to damage it. That what missiles had to do before laserheads were invented. But sidewalls developed to the point that it was nearly impossible for missile penaids to succeed. Penaids had to have the right modulation, and the sidewalls were varying too unpredictably. That's why graser combat was the norm until laserheads let missiles cause damage from well away from the ship.
It is not fully explained, but it is likely that one reason updates to missiles are so important is that the ship computers are constantly monitoring the enemy ECM (which includes the sidewalls), trying to look for hidden patterns, trying to predict what the ECM will do in the next ten seconds. All those predictions go out to the missiles, to give them as much advantage as possible in defeating the enemy ECM and causing as much damage as possible.
The Thunder of God, using canned ECM routines, was cycling ECM in a repeated pattern. Once Rafe knew the pattern, he could program the penaids of the contact nukes to adjust for the
already known sidewall modulation pattern.
Think of Papillon, stuck on Devil's Island, trying to escape. The waves would normally dash anyone jumping off the cliff into the rocks. But studying the pattern, he was able to jump at the right point--every seventh wave was a little bigger than the others. He escaped to the mainland.
