The Alamo Contingency has already failed

Brigade XO wrote:The grazer torpedo really is a sort of analog of a wet navy torpedo in the way it is used and against what it is used.
[snip]
The g-missiles are another question. Stealthy......exactly how stealthy and by what means of propulsion to get from a "resting" start to enough velocity to set up a detectable bow-wave of particles when fired from somewhere within a star system? How low a power level would a couple of thousand g-missiles need to bring up their impellers to avoid warship sensors -even those inside the hyper limit- to not notice that many impeller systems switching on?
To our knowledge, nothing near the Galton system was ever using a spider drive and nobody has mentioned that shipboard (or station mounted) missile launchers use launching systems that start out driving the missiles at the speeds the g-missiles would need to build up that considerable wave front.
Just wondering how that works.

Because there are actually 3 MAlign graserhead equipped weapons - and we've only seen two of them in action.

1) Graser torpedoes - the spider drive weapons used in Oyster Bay. Slow, 250 gees, but nearly undetectable, apparently the longest endurance platform, and with the most powerful version of the graserhead.

2) Graser missiles - Oversized Cataphracts "MDMs" with a scaled down less powerful graserhead. Fast, though ultimately shorter ranged that either of the other two slower but longer endurance platforms, but not at all stealthy.
The pods of those at Gaston "Adebayo had been forced to destroy before Honor crossed the hyper-limit" so we've never seen them in action.

2) Hasta III - a MAlign recon drone, with the intermediate acceleration and stealth that that implies (higher accel than the graser torp, but less stealthy; much lower accel that the graser missile but far stealthier), also with a scaled down graserhead. (Basically their counterpart to Mistletoe; Manticore's laserhead equipped ghost rider recon drone). And at Gaston used in conjunction with a reusable stealth tug to pre-position the Hasta III pods.


So the initial Hasta IIIs launch was able to get as close as it did because it basically had a tug using a lower power stealthed wedge give its its initial velocity towards Honor's fleet, and then it's modified stealthy recon drone derived drive was able to take over for approach maneuvering. (I'm not sure whether or not the III it had a Cataphract 2nd stage for terminal attack. The Solarian Hasta used at Beowulf did; but it was based off a SLN recon drone and carried their Cataphract-C 2nd stage with its laserhead. The text of TEIF doesn't seem to mention it; despite some of those initial wave III's hitting their targets)
Once Manticore had data from that first launch they were able to detect subsequent launcher further out and were able to stop them cold.

(And then the final treacherous missile ambush at Gaston was using conventional laserheads; but tons of them at very, very, short range)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:The grazer torpedo really is a sort of analog of a wet navy torpedo in the way it is used and against what it is used.
[snip]
The g-missiles are another question. Stealthy......exactly how stealthy and by what means of propulsion to get from a "resting" start to enough velocity to set up a detectable bow-wave of particles when fired from somewhere within a star system? How low a power level would a couple of thousand g-missiles need to bring up their impellers to avoid warship sensors -even those inside the hyper limit- to not notice that many impeller systems switching on?
To our knowledge, nothing near the Galton system was ever using a spider drive and nobody has mentioned that shipboard (or station mounted) missile launchers use launching systems that start out driving the missiles at the speeds the g-missiles would need to build up that considerable wave front.
Just wondering how that works.

Because there are actually 3 MAlign graserhead equipped weapons - and we've only seen two of them in action.

1) Graser torpedoes - the spider drive weapons used in Oyster Bay. Slow, 250 gees, but nearly undetectable, apparently the longest endurance platform, and with the most powerful version of the graserhead.

2) Graser missiles - Oversized Cataphracts "MDMs" with a scaled down less powerful graserhead. Fast, though ultimately shorter ranged that either of the other two slower but longer endurance platforms, but not at all stealthy.
The pods of those at Gaston "Adebayo had been forced to destroy before Honor crossed the hyper-limit" so we've never seen them in action.

2) Hasta III - a MAlign recon drone, with the intermediate acceleration and stealth that that implies (higher accel than the graser torp, but less stealthy; much lower accel that the graser missile but far stealthier), also with a scaled down graserhead. (Basically their counterpart to Mistletoe; Manticore's laserhead equipped ghost rider recon drone). And at Gaston used in conjunction with a reusable stealth tug to pre-position the Hasta III pods.


So the initial Hasta IIIs launch was able to get as close as it did because it basically had a tug using a lower power stealthed wedge give its its initial velocity towards Honor's fleet, and then it's modified stealthy recon drone derived drive was able to take over for approach maneuvering. (I'm not sure whether or not the III it had a Cataphract 2nd stage for terminal attack. The Solarian Hasta used at Beowulf did; but it was based off a SLN recon drone and carried their Cataphract-C 2nd stage with its laserhead. The text of TEIF doesn't seem to mention it; despite some of those initial wave III's hitting their targets)
Once Manticore had data from that first launch they were able to detect subsequent launcher further out and were able to stop them cold.

(And then the final treacherous missile ambush at Gaston was using conventional laserheads; but tons of them at very, very, short range)

Actually, there technically was a 4th weapon, the SilverBullet. Essentially, a Gravtorp with a passive, solar powered extender module.

The graser torpedoes may well have active sensors, but they haven’t been used. I’m not sure they would be worth the space power heat they use given the typical mission.

But the torpedo is basically a common transport bus, the warhead is a modular unit that gets integrated into the torpedo. And it could in theory be something other than a warhead, say an EW, surveillance, or even a high value transport module.

kzt wrote:Sidewalls are sufficiently transparent that if you can see the sidewall you can tell where the ship is. I’d assume the same is true for bucklers etc.

Does anyone have information on how "transparent" a sidewall (or buckler) really is?

From Ashes of Victory:

Chapter 26 wrote:No one would ever know how many hundreds of individual lasers wasted themselves uselessly on the impenetrable gravity bands of their targets' impeller wedges, or how many more were twisted aside at the last minute by the sidewalls shielding their victims' flanks.

It seems to me that if a sidewall can bend a laser beam, seeing though it is not simple. I would expect it to involve some hefty analysis and computation, since a sidewall (or buckler) is a gravity band similar to a wedge (but weaker).

From "The Universe of Honor Harrington" in More Than Honor:

In the military sphere, it was soon discovered that although the bow (or "throat") and stern aspects of an impeller wedge must remain open, additional "sidewall" grav waves could be generated to close its open sides and serve as shields against hostile fire, as not even an energy beam (generated using then-current technology) could penetrate a wave front in which effective local gravity went from zero to several hundred thousand gravities.

Brigade XO wrote:
snip

So, do the grazer torpedoes have active (vs passive) sensors tracking their targets? Probably not, otherwise lighting off those broadcasting active sensors would tell anybody in quite an area that something was pinging for a target and probably fairly quickly pinpoint the location of the active transmitter.

Do consider that the torpedoes could be led in from a mothership or motherghost (lol) because MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you.

So, the MA's Ghosts and/or LDs may be able to guide the torps in via advanced whisker laser technology, or whatever new MA invention. The close proximity of a stealthy ship guiding launches in are also exempt from needing full-up FTL capabilities.

Stealthy MA platforms seeded throughout a system can achieve the same result of leading a launch to lunch.

penny wrote:Do consider that the torpedoes could be led in from a mothership or motherghost (lol) because MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you.

So, the MA's Ghosts and/or LDs may be able to guide the torps in via advanced whisker laser technology, or whatever new MA invention. The close proximity of a stealthy ship guiding launches in are also exempt from needing full-up FTL capabilities.

Stealthy MA platforms seeded throughout a system can achieve the same result of leading a launch to lunch.

If the Grand Alliance surrounds itself with a cloud of Ghost Rider recon drones, then we know that the MA platforms, although very stealthy, are not as invisible as you suggest: from Mission of Honor:

Chapter 9 wrote:Unlike the starships of most navies, the MAN's scouts hadn't settled for simple smart paint. Other ships could control and reconfigure their "paint" at will, transforming their hulls—or portions of those hulls—into whatever they needed at any given moment, from nearly perfectly reflective surfaces to black bodies. The Ghosts' capabilities, however, went much further than that. Instead of the relatively simpleminded nanotech of most ships' "paint," the surface of Apparition's hull was capable of mimicking effectively any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Her passive sensors detected any incoming radiation, from infrared through cosmic rays, and her computers mapped the data onto her hull, where her extraordinarily capable nannies reproduced it. In effect, anyone looking at Apparition when her stealth was fully engaged would "see" whatever the sensors exactly opposite his viewpoint "saw," as if the entire ship were a single sheet of crystoplast.
That was the theory, at least, and in this case, what theory predicted and reality achieved were remarkably close together.
It wasn't perfect, of course. The system's greatest weakness was that it couldn't give complete coverage. Like any stealth system, it still had to deal with things like waste heat, for example. Current technology could recapture and use an enormous percentage of that heat, but not all of it, and what they couldn't capture still had to go somewhere. And, like other navies' stealth systems, the MAN's dealt with that by radiating that heat away from known enemy sensors. Modern stealth fields could do a lot to minimize even heat signatures, but nothing could completely eliminate them, and stealth fields themselves were detectable at extremely short ranges, so any ship remained vulnerable to detection by a sufficiently sensitive sensor on exactly the right (or wrong) bearing.

-- snip --

However difficult a sensor target they might be for Bogey Two's shipboard systems, the rules would change abruptly if the Grayson cruiser decided to deploy her own recon platforms. If she were to do that, and if the platforms got a good, close-range look at the aspect Apparition was keeping turned away from their mothership, the chance of detection went from abysmally low to terrifyingly high in very short order. Which meant what Sung was really doing was betting that the odds of the Grayson's choosing to deploy recon platforms were lower than the odds of her shipboard systems detecting the Spider's activation flare if he maneuvered to avoid her.
Of course, even if we did try to crab away from her, it wouldn't help a whole hell of a lot if she decided to launch platforms. All we'd really manage to do would be to move her target a bit further away from her, and there's a reason they call remote platforms remote

Did the GA do this at Dalton for protection? We know that they sent out a massive amount of recon drones. But did they send them in all directions?

penny wrote:Do consider that the torpedoes could be led in from a mothership or motherghost (lol) because MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you.

So, the MA's Ghosts and/or LDs may be able to guide the torps in via advanced whisker laser technology, or whatever new MA invention. The close proximity of a stealthy ship guiding launches in are also exempt from needing full-up FTL capabilities.

Stealthy MA platforms seeded throughout a system can achieve the same result of leading a launch to lunch.

Sure - but that's got two problems.
First the Spider ships are detectable at 1 light-second [MoH] (That's ~300,000 km. Or 6 times effective energy weapons range. Or 78% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon).

While that's very close for Honorverse combat, it's not exactly "inside your underwear". They can't hurt a target with lightspeed weapons from out there. And if detected at that range they'd be torn apart (if nothing else the wedges of CMs can vaporize the hull - and a Mk31 CM can cover that distance in under 22 seconds)

And they've got the same problem the torpedo does, an acceleration that's much slower than their target. Against a target that's underway they need it to cooperate and move towards them because they can't chase down a target moving parallel or away from them. (At least not short of it slowing itself down to, say, enter planetary orbit)

penny wrote:

Do consider that the torpedoes could be led in from a mothership or motherghost (lol) because MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you.

So, the MA's Ghosts and/or LDs may be able to guide the torps in via advanced whisker laser technology, or whatever new MA invention. The close proximity of a stealthy ship guiding launches in are also exempt from needing full-up FTL capabilities.

Stealthy MA platforms seeded throughout a system can achieve the same result of leading a launch to lunch.[/quote]

That's the whole point.
The GTs were launched or at least released from the Sharks with explicit targeting based on the recon done by the Ghost for all sorts of targets that are essentially in stable orbits and quinticentialy highly predictable about where and when they will be in their own orbit at a given time. The major stations. The industrial operations. The "Dispursed Yards". Communications and navigational bouys, even long time mouring positions such as those assigned by the military yards to park ships awaiting repair or upgrade.
The spider drives can bring the speeds up as high as nessisarry and then decelerate (if they are going to need to to slice up targets like the stations - including slicing though the fusion reactors to help the stations self destruct- instead of something just smashing a contact warhead into s smaller target. Pop the shroud off the PASSIVE sensors on the GT's to confirm where they are relative to the target as they eel around it in stealth to set up the best position relative to the station and them....zap.
Ambush, stealth weapons sent from long distance with hyper accurate targeting

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Do consider that the torpedoes could be led in from a mothership or motherghost (lol) because MA tech - I have been long proposing - can get inside your underwear with you.

So, the MA's Ghosts and/or LDs may be able to guide the torps in via advanced whisker laser technology, or whatever new MA invention. The close proximity of a stealthy ship guiding launches in are also exempt from needing full-up FTL capabilities.

Stealthy MA platforms seeded throughout a system can achieve the same result of leading a launch to lunch.

Sure - but that's got two problems.
First the Spider ships are detectable at 1 light-second [MoH] (That's ~300,000 km. Or 6 times effective energy weapons range. Or 78% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon).

While that's very close for Honorverse combat, it's not exactly "inside your underwear". They can't hurt a target with lightspeed weapons from out there. And if detected at that range they'd be torn apart (if nothing else the wedges of CMs can vaporize the hull - and a Mk31 CM can cover that distance in under 22 seconds)

And they've got the same problem the torpedo does, an acceleration that's much slower than their target. Against a target that's underway they need it to cooperate and move towards them because they can't chase down a target moving parallel or away from them. (At least not short of it slowing itself down to, say, enter planetary orbit)

I have an ongoing disagreement about that 1 light-second. That came about from the musings of the MA's own people using their own sensors to detect their own (a cut above) stealthy hardware. And they knew where to look and they knew they were there. And it wasn't in the middle of the heat of battle. And it wasn't an attack on a completely oblivious target in time of peace. And that light-second was not referring to the LD, was it? I just cannot jump on that bandwagon just yet. Like Honor, I'll take it with a grain of salt.

The LDs will use a tactic to herd the faster wedges into an awaiting web. Says the Spider to the flies.

Funny thing about sensors and computers... they don't "look" and "feel about" ... they just send telemetry...

So, NO, no one needs to "know" where to look at 1 light second. This is a 0 or a 1. Sensors are fixed in place to obtain exceedingly accurate positioning data to send a light beam out to a target at said distance. There is no way you can "move" said sensors in reality other than say, LONG distance scans which are meant for Millions upon Millions of kilometers. Now maybe DW is talking about LONG distance scans which ***Can*** be obtained using a moving sensor in a search pattern. But why? If you already MUST have said fixed sensors for using your own GRASERS/PDLC's, who reach out that distance to target and destroy... what is the point of 1 light second? That is lower than NORMAL Grader targeting distance.

Now said computer can be programmed wrong to NOT give a positive feedback or the offensive/defensive guy can give out false signals and pretend to look like say... a LAC or something but as soon as they do that, the Good guys will know INSTANTLY YOU are NOT one of them as They already KNOW where all their ships are. And 1 second later you are dead as a Graser meant to go through sidewalls will utterly eviscerate any Spider based Propulsion unless they can also have a spherical sidewall themselves(I think they can)... Of course bringing up a sidewall or even the telltales of warming up the sidewall generators is EASILY seen at Millions of Kilometers, let alone 1 light second... So...