Attacking Darius:

Now seems to be a good time to revisit this.

cthia wrote:

An LD Running Silent

Exactly what tactics might allow an LD to sneak up on a skunk and steal his stink?



— A newly developed material on the hull which bends light. This should allow for very close approaches.

— The most vulnerable blind spot? Approaching from the rear of enemy vessels where radar or human attention might not be focused. The vector of least likely threat.

— Nano coating on the hull used to deter radar.

— Possible reorientation of LD towards the prey.

— A Stealthy Shape which minimizes detection by minimizing cross sections, that reflect radar returns away from source.

— Very slowly.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'll note that the rear of Honorverse ships has quite a lot of radar focused from it. They do spend quite a lot of their time flying "backwards" -- with their aft hammerhead pointed into the direction of travel. As such it has just as much radar and sensors, devoted to watching where it's going and for any approaching threat, as the forward hammerhead does.

(That's what happens when you've got ships with effectively no drag/friction to slow them down and effectively only able to accelerate towards their bow. To come to a stop you point forwards for the first half of the trip -- accelerating to maximum speed -- then flip over and send the second half of the trip flying tail first as you apply acceleration towards your bow to scrub off all the speed you just built up)

So doesn't matter which ways its flying, or if you consider the rear with respect to the ship hull, or the direction of travel, the same quality of sensors are pointed each way.

The actual blind, or at least myopic, spots are from directly above or directly below, where the ship's wedge distorts and clouds its own sensors. It can see through its wedge, thanks to knowing more about the wedge's current state than any outside observer could; but even so the sensor view is still degraded.

However I don't know if a warship would normally maintain a constant level, or if it might periodically do a slow roll to sweep its broadside sensors around through those normally wedge obscured areas.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Didn't we say that both hammerheads are actually the most observed directions in any impeller ship? Those are the two most vulnerable aspects, not protected by either the wedge or the sidewalls. If the ship is under acceleration, it can't have more than a buckler in one of the two direction-of-travel aspects either.

Anyway, why would a computer be lax? If a ship is detectable, the computer can do it, therefore the computer will do it, tirelessly. Human input is only required when the machine algorithms don't suffice and that usually requires that humans intuit something from what the computer considers noise. If the ship and the humans aboard it don't think there's danger, they won't be doing anything, so it won't matter which direction the danger comes from.

But danger should not come from the most watched aspects, because that's where the radar and lidar will be most effective on.

What's more, how is a spider ship going to come to an impeller ship's rear? It can't be during acceleration because the spider ship can't catch up. So it would have to be during deceleration.

If you meant the stern aspect of the ship, then that's the direction of travel, where the ship is going to. That's the opposite of what you said the humans' attention would be: they will be looking at where they're going, not where they've come from (which was clear when they passed through it). For pod-laying ships, that's the direction of the pod bay doors (which HAL won't open). It's the most vulnerable part of the ship, which means it's where the most attention should be given.

If you meant on the same direction of travel, then this is the throat aspect of the wedge. It's where pod-laying ships have most sensors and weapons, because they are not encumbered by the pod bay doors. I can agree with you this is where the crew will be paying least attention to because the danger would be coming from somewhere they've just been through, so they'd think it clear. The problem for the attacker is that they have to build up velocity and not decelerate, so they will be shooting past the target ships, and probably at a very low relative velocity. That places them in the danger basket for a long time.

No, I don't see any one-dimensional LD tactic working. It needs to be at least two-dimensional, coming at an angle. That means dealing with the sidewalls.

Jonathan_S wrote:I don't see how that follows from your premise.
The Crazy Ivan maneuver was done to swing around so the noisy prop wasn't masking sounds from the rear and to swing the large senstivie bow sonar array in that direction (to hopefully catch any trailing subs).

But you're arguing that the Honorverse equivalent hiding spot is caused not by propulsion interference or lack of equal quality rear facing sensors but rather by tac crews lack of focus there. If so there's no need for a Crazy Ivan, or the more sedate partial turn to clear their baffles, to check their "six" -- the tac crews just need to actually pay attention to the sensors that are already pointed that way. (Whether that's all the time, or temporarily switching their focus). And unlike a baffle clearing maneuver checking the sensors doesn't tip off any observers that you're checking for them.

(And note that subs have basically stopped these maneuvers as well thanks to mostly being equipped with towed sonar arrays which can look behind them without any maneuvering -- showing again that once you have quality rear facing sensors you no longer need to maneuver to check your "six")


Also, I doubt the (currently) rear facing sensors are especially neglected. The Captain and XO may not be paying the most attention to that area, but the tactical department will have people assigned to every sensor and every angle -- and they'll raise an alert if anything was detected.

In each case, bolding and underlining is my own.


The Crazy Ivan reference was meant to be more of a joke. Hence the included (LOL). But I did, and still do, think there is some merit to the notion. Your post confirms it. It is the areas obscured by the wedge. So, a Crazy Ivan type maneuver may become necessary after all.

My point is all about complacency. Jonathan and ThinksMarkedly, much of my notions are included and validated in both of your posts without you knowing it.

I have no doubts that there is a lot of radar devoted to the hammerheads. And there is also no doubts that the computer does a fine job. Ordinarily! But, against the Spiders, that will be part of the problem. Too much has to be left up to the computers out of necessity because a lot of vectors have to be constantly monitored. And Abigail showed that radar has to be directed to a specific area to get maximum resolution.

Again, I am sure that the computer does a very fine job under normal conditions against traditional ships and wedges. But a computer alone will never match a Shannon Foraker who can tease the most out of the data. And, teasing data out of a hazy cloud is what will be constantly needed against this foe. Tirelessly!

Sensors have to first be able to detect an LD before the computers can step in to further analyze the threat. In the Endicott System the Admiral was successfully ambushed by a Masadan ship lying doggo. How much more stealthy is a Spider than a ship lying doggo?

My point is that warm bodies will be needed in conjunction with sensors and computers against the Spiders. And, just any 'ole warm body won't do. Consider that even with data coming in from the sensors, Shannon still had to massage the data ever so much against the RMN. Shannon and ONLY Shannon has shown that kind of witchcraft at tactical. (And perhaps Honor as well when she was also slumming during her heyday at tactical. LOL)

Is there going to be the equivalent of a Shannon Foraker monitoring each threat vector along with the computers against the MA? There had better be. And they better not grow tired, weary, distracted or complacent. Ever.

At any rate, I still think attacking a ship or fleet from the rear will work for the MA. Human nature is not concerned with areas that are deemed "all clear." And if a fleet has just traveled through a given bearing and didn't detect an enemy, sensors will not be wasted on those areas.

When police officers make a bust going from room to room in your home, they are not concerned at all about the rooms they just left. They are deemed "all clear." Their attention is much more focused on the unchecked rooms that lie ahead.

But, the MA can hide "in the closet." Which is just out of detection range directly above or directly below the ship. Launching from a position which is perpendicular to the direction of travel should be undetectable and should allow down the throat or up the kilt shots.

Just like on the gridiron, if you have the angle on your prey, you don't have to be quicker to run him down. The defender just needs to be properly positioned. Torps can be timed to intersect the direction of travel and Cross the T. And again, torps can be launched from stealth where they are out of detection range of the fleet. And the torps will come in from the enemy's "blind spot." Detection, if detection, will be much too late.

The MA simply has to plot slightly different kinds of "intercepts" for their g-torps.

The GA has been blessed. It doesn't have to worry about plotting flight paths for their missiles to intercept enemy vessels which have a much higher acceleration. Therefore, the GA will be surprised by the tactic.

"You just keep right on accelerating on that flight path," says the Spider to the Fly.


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Grammar Gestapo charged me big time.

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All the malignant things that a spider drive warship or missile might do to the Grand Alliance ships are dependent on being invisible to their sensors. We know that it is possible to sense the spider drive, because the Malign can do it.

Therefore it seems a likely task for RFC to set himself sometime early in the next book (?) is to have the GA develop such a sensor for themselves. At present there does not seem to be anything for a Shannon Foraker to tweak; but if someone like her could find that right tweak, then it can be automated so that anyone can do it. Otherwise the GA will be fighting blind and I do not see how that can be made to work.

One possibility offered free of charge: the spider plucking at the hyperspace boundary creates a hum that can be read and located by the GA's FTL receivers.

cthia wrote:The Crazy Ivan reference was meant to be more of a joke. Hence the included (LOL). But I did, and still do, think there is some merit in the notion. Your post confirms it. It is the areas obscured by the wedge. So, a Crazy Ivan type maneuver may become necessary after all.

I agree. Rolling the ship along its longitudinal axis should be a Standard Operating Procedure, controlled by computer. That does not affect in any way its acceleration along the direction of travel. It should not be a constant rotation, but instead a random thing, so that an attacker couldn't predict when to launch an attack.

That's for a single ship or very small squadron. For a larger fleet, just orient each ship differently, so all angles around the direction of travel are optimally scanned, all the time.

The Crazy Ivan manoeuvre also makes sense to make sure the up-the-kilt or down-the-throat shots can't be predicted in advance. The impeller ships should be constantly changing their orientation relative to the direction of travel, again as SOP.

At any rate, I still think attacking a ship or fleet from the rear will work for the MA. Human nature is not concerned with areas that are deemed "all clear." And if a fleet has just traveled through a given bearing and didn't detect an enemy, sensors will not be wasted on those areas.

Note: I wrote the following paragraphs before reaching your "cross the T" conclusion. These paragraphs reach the same conclusion.

The spider ships have lower acceleration than the impeller ships. So there's NO WAY they can attack from the direction the impeller ships have come from (I'm being specific about rear vs front). In order to close with a ship that is accelerating faster, those ships need to have started accelerating before the impeller ones did, which would imply knowing when they would arrive from hyperspace. That's not a reasonable scenario.

The best they could do is keep accelerating towards those ships after they have turned over and begun decelerating, but even then not all geometries are possible. Let's take the Manticore-A system example: the hyperlimit-to-Manticore distance is 12 light-minutes. An impeller ship doing 600 gravities can achieve a zero-zero in 3.36 hours. Meanwhile, a spider ship doing 150 gravities can shoot past Manticore, starting at the same position, in 4.75 hours, and this is not realistic because the two would see each other at the start. That means the spider would ned to start further out.

Attacking from the direction towards which the ships are going does produce viable intercepts. But that's also a well-travelled corridor. And like I said, "where we're going" is where all the sensor watch officers' attention will be.

The only solution I can offer would be a "cross the T" type of attack, like Honor did at Hades. At that point, they don't even need to be accelerating or decelerating, like Honor did.

But, the MA can hide "in the closet." Which is just out of detection range directly above or directly below. Launching from a position which is perpendicular to the direction of travel should be undetectable and should allow down the throat or up the kilt shots.

The problem is still that this requires the impeller ships make it easy by taking a predictable course, like the least time one. After Hades, it should be SOP to take a corkscrew/zig-zag course towards any unsafe target. This makes the cross-the-T attack much more difficult, because it requires a possible last-minute acceleration manoeuvre, which Honor didn't need to do.

The advantage the MAN has that Honor didn't is that they can launch torpedoes. That means the torpedoes can close with the impeller ships, while the launching ships stay out of range.

Just like on the gridiron, if you have the angle on your prey, you don't have to be quicker to run him down. The defender just needs to be properly positioned. Torps can be timed to intersect the direction of travel and Cross the T. And again, torps can be launched from stealth where they are out of detection range of the fleet. And the torps will come in from the enemy's "blind spot." Detection, if detection, will be much too late.

I dispute there being a blind spot. First, as at the top of the reply, the ships should be rolling around their longitudinal axis and a fleet should orient different ships different ways, so there's always 360° optimal observation. Second, the ships should be doing constant Crazy Ivan so attacks on the hammerheads are unpredictably difficult.

Third and most importantly, it should be SOP to have a shell of recon drones around the ships in any unsecured system. It's very likely that when the spider ships and torpedoes can see the recon drones, the drones can see them too. And unlike an attack run up the kilt or down the throat, the defending ships can fire through their sidewalls. Moreover, the other ships in the fleet can fire too, not just the capital ships, and escort ships are likely to be even closer to the torpedoes. Torpedoes don't have this luxury: they must attack the capital ships first and foremost and they must see past the wedge to determine where the ship is inside it.

The MA simply has to plot slightly different kinds of "intercepts" for their g-torps.

The GA has been blessed. It doesn't have to worry about plotting flight paths for their missiles to intercept enemy missiles which have a much higher acceleration. Therefore, the GA will be surprised by the tactic.

"You just keep right on accelerating on that flight path," says the Spider to the Fly.

Except it's the exact tactic that Honor used, therefore has been seen before.

If you are a group of ships going from A to B, you could also accelerate for a while, go to zero acceleration, have ships rotate so that, e.g., some are advancing wedge first, so that no matter which an attacker is approaching only a few ships give it an up the kilt shot. And if you are not going insanely fast, you do not need to stop when you reach the destination.

Think of the attack formation seen toward the end of Ender's Game.

tlb wrote:All the malignant things that a spider drive warship or missile might do to the Grand Alliance ships are dependent on being invisible to their sensors. We know that it is possible to sense the spider drive, because the Malign can do it.

Therefore it seems a likely task for RFC to set himself sometime early in the next book (?) is to have the GA develop such a sensor for themselves. At present there does not seem to be anything for a Shannon Foraker to tweak; but if someone like her could find that right tweak, then it can be automated so that anyone can do it. Otherwise the GA will be fighting blind and I do not see how that can be made to work.

One possibility offered free of charge: the spider plucking at the hyperspace boundary creates a hum that can be read and located by the GA's FTL receivers.

tlb wrote:All the malignant things that a spider drive warship or missile might do to the Grand Alliance ships are dependent on being invisible to their sensors. We know that it is possible to sense the spider drive, because the Malign can do it.

The MAN, using their complete understanding of the Spider and cooperation of the design team, can detect it. At about 300,000 km.

You know what else is at 300,000km? Energy range.

So if you are close enough to detect a spider the you are deep inside the spider's energy envelope. This has certain implications...

tlb wrote:All the malignant things that a spider drive warship or missile might do to the Grand Alliance ships are dependent on being invisible to their sensors. We know that it is possible to sense the spider drive, because the Malign can do it.

kzt wrote:The MAN, using their complete understanding of the Spider and cooperation of the design team, can detect it. At about 300,000 km.

You know what else is at 300,000km? Energy range.

So if you are close enough to detect a spider the you are deep inside the spider's energy envelope. This has certain implications...

I just said it could be done; I did not say the way that RFC will have the Grand Alliance do it is the same. If one can only detect the spider drive when well within energy beam range, then the spider drive is still effectively invisible. I think we can expect the GA to do better, because we do not expect RFC to have them fight blind.

kzt wrote:

tlb wrote:All the malignant things that a spider drive warship or missile might do to the Grand Alliance ships are dependent on being invisible to their sensors. We know that it is possible to sense the spider drive, because the Malign can do it.

The MAN, using their complete understanding of the Spider and cooperation of the design team, can detect it. At about 300,000 km.

You know what else is at 300,000km? Energy range.

So if you are close enough to detect a spider the you are deep inside the spider's energy envelope. This has certain implications...

IIRC, that was with passive sensors only.

I'd love to know what happened when they turned on the kind of active sensors which the Peeps didn't use at the Battle of Cerberus.

tlb wrote:We know that it is possible to sense the spider drive, because the Malign can do it.

kzt wrote:The MAN, using their complete understanding of the Spider and cooperation of the design team, can detect it. At about 300,000 km.

You know what else is at 300,000km? Energy range.

So if you are close enough to detect a spider the you are deep inside the spider's energy envelope. This has certain implications...

munroburton wrote:IIRC, that was with passive sensors only.

I'd love to know what happened when they turned on the kind of active sensors which the Peeps didn't use at the Battle of Cerberus.

But aren't active sensors either Radar or Lidar? Being able to see something with them depends on attributes other than the Spider Driver. We already have technology that makes an airplane almost invisible to Radar and the Ghost scout ships had intelligent coatings that might cancel Lidar. Plus both operate at light speed; it would be much better to have an FTL indicator.

munroburton wrote:I'd love to know what happened when they turned on the kind of active sensors which the Peeps didn't use at the Battle of Cerberus.

Radar has the huge power issues due to R^4 problem.

You want to pick up a target at twice the range? Please insert 16x the radiated power. Per FiE, RMN radar on SDs had a detection range against not very stealthy missiles of 1 Mkm to optimistically 2 Mkm. How far will that work against a system designed to be undetectable with passive or active sensors? I'm thinking F15 vs B2, or a RCS of 25 square meters vs 0.0001 square meters.

You also no longer have any stealth. People can detect and precisely track your multi-terrawatt radars from out in the Oort cloud. They can also track your well illuminated recon drones and LACs.

Lidar has the problem of a more complex signal decay rate, but the critical issues is the spot size and scanning. Remember my example of how large a hemisphere you need to scan to do gamma ray scanning? Guess what, it's the same problem for LIDAR.

And the Spiders are extremely stealthy and are explicitly designed to spoof active sensors, including radar and lidar.

There's also a question of opportunity and cost of opportunity.

Deploying a division of Leonard Detweiler capital ships involves a cost in personnel, expendables, and if nothing else, opportunity: the ships that are waiting for a target to show up are not elsewhere.

There are plenty of systems in the Star Empire, in the Republic of Haven and in the Andermani Empire that will have long-range gravitic sensing much smaller than the capitals. So it's totally feasible to insert a couple of ships two light-days out and have them go completely unnoticed by the defenders.

An LD can sustain an acceleration of 150 gravities, which means they can go from zero to 0.8c in 45 hours. In that time, they can cover just over 18 light-hours. That means an insertion 36 light-hours out takes 90 hours; anything further will incur coasting at 0.8c: so if they inserted 2 light-days out, the extra 12 light-hours add 15 hours to the trip, for a total of 105 hours of insertion.

And then they have to wait. How long does it take for a suitable target to arrive? And what's a suitable target? Is this attack force going to announce itself to the planet by taking out half a squadron of destroyers that came in on patrol? The GF has a thousand destroyers, plus a couple hundred cruisers more. The MAN dedicating 2 out of its 50 LDs is a completely wasteful allocation of resources, and I'm being generous with 50.

So they wait for a minimum of a BC division to arrive. What's the average time between visits of a BC to arbitrary system in Silesia, Talbott, or Haven? Two months? Three? Because I'm pretty sure the time between visits of a battle squadron is going to be measured in years.

And for how long would this tactic work? After the first ships are lost to this tactic, the inhabited planet in the system will warn any new incomers that there is a danger and transmit any readings it obtained. Those arrivals will turn back and hyper out with the information.

So I'm not saying this tactic wouldn't work. It would... a few times, against small fish, for a huge allocation of resources.