Pawn - Q7 ... Checkmate?

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:This is also where I got the idea that missiles may be able to reacquire a friendly vessel after losing lock, if launched while being too close to the target. As I posited in the Attacking Darius thread, the GA will have to get downright deep and dirty into enemy territory to catch a glimpse of the Spiders.

I think Honorverse missiles could be a lot more intelligent about IFF than current torpedoes. A torpedo has very minimal communications with the world once it's wire is cut or broken, while it's not myopic like Honorverse missiles it's vision is abysmal because of the speed it's moving through the water.

It would not be difficult to make a system by which a friendly ship could destruct a missile that has acquired a friendly. Before the battle you generate a bunch of random numbers, every missile is given an ID. This list is shared amongst all friendlies.

If a missile is coming for a friendly it beams a signal in that direction, missile xxxxxxx destruct and the missile complies. The space over which the numbers are allocated is sparse enough that trying to send random destruct commands won't do any good. (Note that there are websites that use this for secure hiding of web pages even now. The website will not respond to a request to list the directory, it will only respond to a request for the right page. If you don't already have a link you can't find it.)

While the ship that is being targeted likely won't know exactly which missile is coming for it it will have a good idea and any other missiles in the flight are either far away or already detonated, sending codes for every possibility is viable.

cthia wrote:Interesting. But I think that may be too optimistic. One, I think we can safely assume the technology to do what you suggest does not exist. Or the Peeps would have used it to destroy all of the missiles launched by the Masadans. And it would give commanding officers on your own team who may object to the present operations the ability to "abort" or destroy your launch. Can you imagine Pavel Young with the ability to abort Honor's launch?

Besides, missiles in the HV are moving very quickly. As in the movie, reacquisition may not give enough warning. Or, HV missiles may not need to actually reacquire, rather than strike a friendly that zigged when it should have zagged. Providence.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Interesting. But I think that may be too optimistic. One, I think we can safely assume the technology to do what you suggest does not exist. Or the Peeps would have used it to destroy all of the missiles launched by the Masadans. And it would give commanding officers on your own team who may object to the present operations the ability to "abort" or destroy your launch. Can you imagine Pavel Young with the ability to abort Honor's launch?

No--the destruct code is determined as the missile is being prepped, specifically to avoid it being obtained by clandestine means. Other units only know it if they're told it. The Masadans wouldn't tell the Peeps.

Besides, missiles in the HV are moving very quickly. As in the movie, reacquisition may not give enough warning. Or, HV missiles may not need to actually reacquire, rather than strike a friendly that zigged when it should have zagged. Providence.

Any friendly that's that close is deep inside the enemy's envelope and is almost certainly dead. The only real threat is a missile that runs past it's target and tries to engage something on the other side. The ship that fired it should normally destruct such a missile but it's possible it didn't survive to do so.

cthia wrote:The Masadans's were not too keen on ship handling. I would imagine that those kinds of details were over their heads. You certainly may be right, but, personally, I can't imagine that a salvo's codes would be shared with the rest of the fleet. There is just too much going on, especially at times when there are several formations spread out in the system.

But it does beg the question of how missiles are aborted by a ship that didn't launch them, if the ship that launched them has been destroyed.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:The Masadans's were not too keen on ship handling. I would imagine that those kinds of details were over their heads. You certainly may be right, but, personally, I can't imagine that a salvo's codes would be shared with the rest of the fleet. There is just too much going on, especially at times when there are several formations spread out in the system.

But it does beg the question of how missiles are aborted by a ship that didn't launch them, if the ship that launched them has been destroyed.

That's exactly the point: the Masadans wouldn't share the codes, even if they knew that sharing the codes with their friendlies is a good idea. That means that no one but the ship that launched them would know what the codes are.

I also assume that setting the codes on missiles is an automatic thing... you don't want to forget it during an engagement and leave the default code as "admin" / "admin". In a regular fleet action, when the ships are tied into a tactical net, the sharing of the codes is probably automatic too, the same way that they direct which ship's CMs are targetting which region of oncoming missiles and which ship's shipkillers are directed at a specific sensor target. Once MNS Principality was captured, there was no tac net for MNS Thunder of God to share its codes with.

On the other hand, one of the things I'd have expected the Peeps to do is to build in a backdoor code for themselves, in case the Masadans ever decided to turn those missiles against them. However, I don't expect that Yu or Theisman knew those codes and, even if they had a thumb drive with them, it might not have been possible to use Manty hardware to send. The PN would specifically design something that it would be hard for the RMN to emulate.

cthia wrote:Your post makes a lot of sense. I can certainly see how it would be automated. It also means that if a ship's computers are compromised, every one of their salvos can be aborted by the enemy. A battle can be over well before the errant code can be found. The KISS principle seems to argue that a system like that is just too complicated, thus vulnerable.

What was that that Scotty said? Scotty: The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Your post makes a lot of sense. I can certainly see how it would be automated. It also means that if a ship's computers are compromised, every one of their salvos can be aborted by the enemy. A battle can be over well before the errant code can be found. The KISS principle seems to argue that a system like that is just too complicated, thus vulnerable.

What was that that Scotty said? Scotty: The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

Agreed, but this vulnerability you speak of must likely be a tremendous backdoor that got exploited by the enemy. Which is why people who understand security don't leave backdoors or master keys or somesuch, because they know that it may fall on the hands of people they don't like.

A simple hacking is not likely in fleet action. The two opposing fleets, even before the advent of MDMs, were up to 30 light seconds from each other. The issue is latency: with a round-trip measured in a minute, it's very difficult to probe the enemy's computers for failures before the salvo hits you.

When they reached energy range, I do expect a furious cyber warfare did ensue. Both sides would be trying to crash the other's tactical network, spoof commands from the controlling ships, identify which ships are tactical nodes to target first and thus collapse the network; and all other types of hacking. If both sides survive and disengage, if you had obtained some knowledge of where the enemy's forces, objectives, etc., you could put that on the win column.

Which is probably why remote hacking is very difficult. Before MDMs, ships did get very close to each other (relatively speaking) and such kind of hacking would be possible.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Interesting. But I think that may be too optimistic. One, I think we can safely assume the technology to do what you suggest does not exist. Or the Peeps would have used it to destroy all of the missiles launched by the Masadans. And it would give commanding officers on your own team who may object to the present operations the ability to "abort" or destroy your launch. Can you imagine Pavel Young with the ability to abort Honor's launch?

No--the destruct code is determined as the missile is being prepped, specifically to avoid it being obtained by clandestine means. Other units only know it if they're told it. The Masadans wouldn't tell the Peeps.

Besides, missiles in the HV are moving very quickly. As in the movie, reacquisition may not give enough warning. Or, HV missiles may not need to actually reacquire, rather than strike a friendly that zigged when it should have zagged. Providence.

Any friendly that's that close is deep inside the enemy's envelope and is almost certainly dead. The only real threat is a missile that runs past it's target and tries to engage something on the other side. The ship that fired it should normally destruct such a missile but it's possible it didn't survive to do so.

cthia wrote:That is the tactic used by the Japanese in Vietnam. The enemy was hidden underground. Hence, in several cases the Marines had advanced too far without knowing it.