OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

cthia wrote:So I think this early initial communication is taken for granted and can be jammed. Traditionally, battles didn't have to worry about anything getting in close enough to jam telemetry. To be honest, the Manties opened that can of worms.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I agree that initial communication is there. My arguments were that even if it isn't there, the risk is minimised, but I think it's a sensible precaution to always keep the link on.

However, I strongly disagree with being able to jam short-range communications like this. That means getting a platform to knife-fighting range, much, much closer than anything that we've seen survive stealth. And besides, it can't ramp up power in microseconds -- unless it wants to explode, like a Dazzler -- which means that it would either be too late to do any good (the missiles are away from danger) or it would give away that it is powering up and would be fried by a close-range graser.

Plus, the missile launch is a well-choreographed dance, but it's also not perfect. The ships further out launch first, to make a time-on-target attack easier. But there will be minute delays that can easily be corrected prior to bringing up the wedge or during flight, by taking a slightly longer path. This is to say that jamming the launch will not work because it won't catch all the missiles at the same vulnerable spot.

I also don't see how it would know when to do that. Unless such a platform was programmed with precognition, it can't know that the ships it is (passively!) observing are going to launch. It's necessarily reacting to the launch.

Finally, I don't think the link is jammable in the first place, because it is probably a laser comm. And yes, I am talking about the light-speed traditional link. Because for this tactic to be effective, you'd need to jam both. And I don't think the FTL link would be used for initial manoeuvring and tasking anyway.

So far as we know, all the missiles fired at the Solarian Navy at Beowulf had their instructions loaded via FTL communication. Why do I say FTL communication? Because with Mycroft destroyed, which would ordinarily have received the instructions, that data had to be sent to the pods from great distances.

The destruction of Mycroft was in effect a massive attempt by the Malign to jam the instructions going to the missiles.

tlb wrote:So far as we know, all the missiles fired at the Solarian Navy at Beowulf had their instructions loaded via FTL communication. Why do I say FTL communication? Because with Mycroft destroyed, which would ordinarily have received the instructions, that data had to be sent to the pods from great distances.

I don't think I agree with that. Precisely because it took so long makes it sound like the instructions were sent via regular laser comms. But that wouldn't explain either, because it was over 14 minutes to do so and the missiles couldn't be that far away from HQ. That's further than the threat itself was.

But even if FTL was used, that doesn't mean they were talking to the Mk23-Es via FTL. The transmission might have been via Hermes to a nearby receiver, which communicated with the pods at regular light-speed.

tlb wrote:So far as we know, all the missiles fired at the Solarian Navy at Beowulf had their instructions loaded via FTL communication. Why do I say FTL communication? Because with Mycroft destroyed, which would ordinarily have received the instructions, that data had to be sent to the pods from great distances.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't think I agree with that. Precisely because it took so long makes it sound like the instructions were sent via regular laser comms. But that wouldn't explain either, because it was over 14 minutes to do so and the missiles couldn't be that far away from HQ. That's further than the threat itself was.

But even if FTL was used, that doesn't mean they were talking to the Mk23-Es via FTL. The transmission might have been via Hermes to a nearby receiver, which communicated with the pods at regular light-speed.

I expect that a good part of the 14 minutes, aside from distance, is that each pod must be individually addressed in the absence of Mycroft. Whether directly to the pod or indirectly with the use of a Hermes buoy, is a quibble that cannot be answered.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:So far as we know, all the missiles fired at the Solarian Navy at Beowulf had their instructions loaded via FTL communication. Why do I say FTL communication? Because with Mycroft destroyed, which would ordinarily have received the instructions, that data had to be sent to the pods from great distances.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't think I agree with that. Precisely because it took so long makes it sound like the instructions were sent via regular laser comms. But that wouldn't explain either, because it was over 14 minutes to do so and the missiles couldn't be that far away from HQ. That's further than the threat itself was.

But even if FTL was used, that doesn't mean they were talking to the Mk23-Es via FTL. The transmission might have been via Hermes to a nearby receiver, which communicated with the pods at regular light-speed.

I expect that a good part of the 14 minutes, aside from distance, is that each pod must be individually addressed in the absence of Mycroft. Whether directly to the pod or indirectly with the use of a Hermes buoy, is a quibble that cannot be answered.

You may have a point tlb. The 14 minutes IS rather significant, and it makes me wish for details of not only why it took so long, but also what amount of time the same process would normally require with Mycroft intact.

But I always thought the instructions were sent directly to the MK-23E "COMMAND" missile, and then the command missile disseminated the commands to its brood. That would only require one channel of checking / error-checking in FTL.

Yet, if each pod had to be tended to separately, that would certainly be time consuming. EOF receipt, error checking, bit checking of the data to each pod with ever changing distance.

Has anyone noted that if jamming IS possible, and if the LDs can reproduce what the MA did at Beowulf, and then jam the launch...

cthia wrote:Has anyone noted that if jamming IS possible, and if the LDs can reproduce what the MA did at Beowulf, and then jam the launch...

Now that is a good idea for jamming: the dispersed shoals of the system defence missiles, be it Mk23F or the 4-stage MDMs. That would definitely negate some of the advantage of the defender and might be actually quite crucial for a stealth penetration. The pods nearest the defenders' HQ wouldn't be compromised -- there's little chance a jamming device can jam at that close range and there's always a light-speed fallback -- but the problem is not how many missiles can be brought to bear, but how quickly they can bear on target.

Suppose the defenders are on alert and getting sporadic sensor ghosts of an LD incursion. They can vector RDs, which travel at 3500 gravities, but those can't take out the enemy. They could be told to ram, but it's unlikely they could actually achieve it. So the defenders would want to send missiles towards the target and have them arrive as quickly as possible, so the ghost can't have shifted positions too drastically. Therefore, negating the defenders' ability to send missiles from their dispersed shoals makes it possible for the stealth attacker to break away.

What exactly this can be used for, I don't know. That bears some thought. The jamming platforms are, by definition, putting out a lot of energy and can't be missed. They will be taken out if they are not defended. If they are, then they are calling strikes on the defenders, which also sounds like a bad idea. So this is clearly a distraction to permit an insertion. But what's the goal?

So, will the Alignment's next surprise is to make a Jamming Torpedo variant of the GT and run them into whatever area they think the controls for pod-based system defense is going to be and use Jammers to disrupt FTL and/or normal control channels for the system defense missiles?

Probably won't use quite as much power as the the GT's grazer would so the jamming can last, well longer than a few minutes. Challenge is that they have to ID the control nodes and then get the corps close to said nodes and probably between them and where the missiles are going to be heading for. So it's possible. On the other hand given Apollo and the Mk23-Es involved, can you provide enough jamming, long enough to keep each pod's worth of missiles from getting updates via FTL? If your launching a spread pattern in X vector, the missiles are going to head at least in the initial direction and any updates will be fed to them. Perhaps the RDs can push data to the Mk23-E's? Gets complicated really quickly.
But, of course, the LD is probably out at the hyper limit and whatever else it is sending in-system having been scattered in on ballistic trajectory like the Oyster Bay packages. The LD could (we believe) just go into hyper and do whatever tactics they have developed for trying to keep hostile craft from following them into and through hyperspace.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Has anyone noted that if jamming IS possible, and if the LDs can reproduce what the MA did at Beowulf, and then jam the launch...

Now that is a good idea for jamming: the dispersed shoals of the system defence missiles, be it Mk23F or the 4-stage MDMs. That would definitely negate some of the advantage of the defender and might be actually quite crucial for a stealth penetration. The pods nearest the defenders' HQ wouldn't be compromised -- there's little chance a jamming device can jam at that close range and there's always a light-speed fallback -- but the problem is not how many missiles can be brought to bear, but how quickly they can bear on target.

Suppose the defenders are on alert and getting sporadic sensor ghosts of an LD incursion. They can vector RDs, which travel at 3500 gravities, but those can't take out the enemy. They could be told to ram, but it's unlikely they could actually achieve it. So the defenders would want to send missiles towards the target and have them arrive as quickly as possible, so the ghost can't have shifted positions too drastically. Therefore, negating the defenders' ability to send missiles from their dispersed shoals makes it possible for the stealth attacker to break away.

What exactly this can be used for, I don't know. That bears some thought. The jamming platforms are, by definition, putting out a lot of energy and can't be missed. They will be taken out if they are not defended. If they are, then they are calling strikes on the defenders, which also sounds like a bad idea. So this is clearly a distraction to permit an insertion. But what's the goal?

A proper system defense would have forts as well as pods -- if for no other reason that to provide a protected series of locations from which the fire control to the pods can be corredinated.

Those forts should have their own onboard MDM tubes -- so they should pretty easily be able to launch those in a 'home on jam' mode; which is going to limit the life of the jammers. (And we saw back as far as HotQ that normal missiles are able to use an enemy's ECM emitters like a homing beacon if their output sequence becomes predictable -- and jammers have less flexibility in that than deceptive ECM does.

Also, so far, there's no known way to actually jam an FTL signal -- so you'd need to repeat the Silver Bullet trick to kill the Mycroft relays to prevent the outsystem pods from being controlled via FTL. And even then the forts should have their own Keyhole IIs; so up to 5 LM or so would still have FTL control over their local pods no matter what the radio jamming was like.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Has anyone noted that if jamming IS possible, and if the LDs can reproduce what the MA did at Beowulf, and then jam the launch...

Now that is a good idea for jamming: the dispersed shoals of the system defence missiles, be it Mk23F or the 4-stage MDMs. That would definitely negate some of the advantage of the defender and might be actually quite crucial for a stealth penetration. The pods nearest the defenders' HQ wouldn't be compromised -- there's little chance a jamming device can jam at that close range and there's always a light-speed fallback -- but the problem is not how many missiles can be brought to bear, but how quickly they can bear on target.

Suppose the defenders are on alert and getting sporadic sensor ghosts of an LD incursion. They can vector RDs, which travel at 3500 gravities, but those can't take out the enemy. They could be told to ram, but it's unlikely they could actually achieve it. So the defenders would want to send missiles towards the target and have them arrive as quickly as possible, so the ghost can't have shifted positions too drastically. Therefore, negating the defenders' ability to send missiles from their dispersed shoals makes it possible for the stealth attacker to break away.

What exactly this can be used for, I don't know. That bears some thought. The jamming platforms are, by definition, putting out a lot of energy and can't be missed. They will be taken out if they are not defended. If they are, then they are calling strikes on the defenders, which also sounds like a bad idea. So this is clearly a distraction to permit an insertion. But what's the goal?

Jonathan_S wrote:A proper system defense would have forts as well as pods -- if for no other reason that to provide a protected series of locations from which the fire control to the pods can be corredinated.

Those forts should have their own onboard MDM tubes -- so they should pretty easily be able to launch those in a 'home on jam' mode; which is going to limit the life of the jammers. (And we saw back as far as HotQ that normal missiles are able to use an enemy's ECM emitters like a homing beacon if their output sequence becomes predictable -- and jammers have less flexibility in that than deceptive ECM does.

Also, so far, there's no known way to actually jam an FTL signal -- so you'd need to repeat the Silver Bullet trick to kill the Mycroft relays to prevent the outsystem pods from being controlled via FTL. And even then the forts should have their own Keyhole IIs; so up to 5 LM or so would still have FTL control over their local pods no matter what the radio jamming was like.

Maybe. But.

First, let me reiterate that the jamming could take place in the form of actually frying components, receivers. I would imagine the FTL receivers are really sensitive and are just not hardened against that type of attack, because that type of attack might not be expected, and getting a platform planted up your posterior certainly won't be expected.

It might be true that when the platforms go active they might be localized. Might be. But how quickly?

Also, the MA can take a page out of the RMN's book by deploying several platforms which quickly alternate active jamming between them, hopefully preventing any single platform from being locked up.

For the LDs it may become critical to buy themselves more time. At least an additional 14 minutes of evasive maneuvering will allow a Spider to crawl away.

It may be impossible to home in on an intermittent jamming that is very mobile. And very very stealthy.

cthia wrote:Maybe. But.

First, let me reiterate that the jamming could take place in the form of actually frying components, receivers. I would imagine the FTL receivers are really sensitive and are just not hardened against that type of attack, because that type of attack might not be expected, and getting a platform planted up your posterior certainly won't be expected.

<snip>.

Fleets of 100s wedges that move starships (at point blank range) don't burn out Gravitonics - Grav lances (focused on a target sufficient to reset sidewall generators) don't burn out Gravitonics - what would you build that is more powerful than a wedge ot Grav lance that you are going to fit into a 5000 ton chassis with a spider drive and Reactor which will burn out Gravitonics? Remember, a Grav lance takes an 88,000 Ton Light Cruiser to work (Minus it's weapons).

cthia wrote:First, let me reiterate that the jamming could take place in the form of actually frying components, receivers. I would imagine the FTL receivers are really sensitive and are just not hardened against that type of attack, because that type of attack might not be expected, and getting a platform planted up your posterior certainly won't be expected.

What you're describing is not jamming, it's an actual attack. It's similar to an Electromagnetic Pulse. You're also right that if the hardware is not hardened / shielded against it, it will fry. That would not be temporary, actually. It would be a massive attack on any system, frying every recon drone, Hermes buoy, and Mk23 E&F missile's transceivers, possibly even some shipboard ones that didn't have the protection of a sidewall at the time.

I don't think that would be a violation of the Deneb Accords on the conduct of war. Attacking lines of communication is a valid military tactic, after all. Either way, it's not like the MAlign would care.

However, what Theemile said above remains: the amount of energy required to do this is insane. It's quite likely that this amount of energy in FTL could bleed enough in n-space for it to be a huge gamma-ray burst that sterilises life on the planet. That's worse than an Eridani Edict "violation:" it would be an extinction-level event. The only reason it wouldn't kill as many people as the Epsilon Eridani Incident would be if the planet in question didn't have 7 billion people to kill in the first place. We know the Onion is ruthless and is planning on culling a significant percentage of the human population, but "culling" usually denotes a methodical and surgical selection of who to dispose of. Sterilising a planet is indiscriminate killing and puts the entire Galaxy against you, for fear of being the next target.

We have no hint that this could be possible in the Honorverse either.

It might be true that when the platforms go active they might be localized. Might be. But how quickly?

At FTL speeds. Provided, of course, that you don't lose all your sensors in the star system in the blast.

Also, the MA can take a page out of the RMN's book by deploying several platforms which quickly alternate active jamming between them, hopefully preventing any single platform from being locked up.

Good idea, but doesn't help that much. I had assumed they would need to use several platforms anyway, but for this to be effective over a period of time measured in hours, I'd expect the count to be well over a hundred platforms. That will limit the number of other platforms the LDs can deploy if they have to dedicate so much cargo space for Silver Bullet-sized jamming platforms.

For the LDs it may become critical to buy themselves more time. At least an additional 14 minutes of evasive maneuvering will allow a Spider to crawl away.

Indeed, that's the tactic I think makes sense. Not as a prelude to attack, but as a means to disengage and withdraw.

It may be impossible to home in on an intermittent jamming that is very mobile. And very very stealthy.

"Jamming" and "stealthy" are mutually-exclusive, by definition.