Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

Relax wrote:All those pre ERM/DDM/MDM/Pod ships will be SOLD to nations the alliance is Happy with as they are still ALL superior to any ex SLN ships they can get their hands on.

I have always wondered about this common widespread practice of giving examples of your obsolete, but still significant, tech to your allies. Is there any classified tech that could be gleaned from capturing some of the older designs?

The US does it too. We sell stripped down F-16s to allies. I always wondered if certain trade secrets can be reverse engineered or reproduced in some form or fashion from captured or downed planes.

cthia wrote:I have always wondered about this common widespread practice of giving examples of your obsolete, but still significant, tech to your allies. Is there any classified tech that could be gleaned from capturing some of the older designs?

Yes, but we can't know for sure because we don't have enough details of the tech. I think that anything older than 1875 is not revealing anything, since at that point everything was based on Solarian tech, with maybe a quirk here and there. For Haven, anything up until the 1910s in fact, since they were still buying from the League legally until the embargo was placed, and then illegally (like the Argus).

Selling Star Knights and Victories could be revealing something, indeed. But that boat has sailed (literally and figuratively) because High Ridge did indeed sell a lot of them to the other Manticore Alliance members. Just think about the fact that Zanzibar probably has a full battle squadron that could, tonne for tonne and hull for hull, take on the best that the League could offer. I suspect that High Ridge would have required some of the newest equipment be removed from those ships prior to being sold, because as ill-advised as his policies were, he was consistent in wanting to keep Manticore ahead of everyone else.

The US does it too. We sell stripped down F-16s to allies. I always wondered if certain trade secrets can be reverse engineered or reproduced in some form or fashion from captured or downed planes.

Captured and downed, definitely, since those are not export versions. I remember when an F117 went down in the 1990s (or was it later?) and there was worry that the proprietary technology that enabled the radar invisibility could be reverse engineered.

Brigade XO wrote:The suggestion of exploration cruisers is a good one. Those will need a significant range and both "enough" crew (and marines and science staff) plus defence/offence capability to carry out extended missions. Not sure if a Heavy Cruiser or BC variant would be a good platform but it certainly would give range and power.
The Harvest Joy was an older Light Cruiser conversation to a wormhole research ship. It seems to me that with the tonnage creep we have seen, a HC or BC would come into the adjusted size with whatever modifications were needed.

An exploration ship built on a heavy cruiser design and hull has a certain appeal. Especially if it is sent on a fixed-length mission (say, five years), to explore strange new worlds. They could even boldly go and not split infinitives.

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An exploration ship built on a heavy cruiser design and hull has a certain appeal. Especially if it is sent on a fixed-length mission (say, five years), to explore strange new worlds. They could even boldly go and not split infinitives.[/quote]

Perhaps some of them could go out for several years but I was thinking more along the lines of what Terekhov did to Monica by sliding a Recon Drone though the system. You don't have to go inside the hyper limit but particularly with an uninhabited (or at least not known to be inhabited) you can come out at a reasonable distance and push some birds in ahead and them come in at a "normal" pace to survey the place while taking clandestine looks at anything that looks interesting from when you entered normal space.
If there is nobody there you just get a better look at the system from alternative angles and pick your RDs up on the other side. If it already belongs to someone, know or unknown, you can do the diplomatic thing and pay a friendly visit (and probably get a lot closer to where any industrial activity is going on) but you still get your RD takes for future analysis. They can stay in stealth mode and creep though the system.

Five years is too long:) There is going to have to be some plan to get reports back to SEM on a more frequent basis which is possibly going to involve setting up rendezvous to pass information. Obviously, if something untoward is discovered, the ship is going to want to -as quietly and with as little excitement (like weapons fire) as possible and run like hell to deliver the bad news.

Perhaps now would be a good time for at least Manticore to get ONI to be having "conversations" with parts of the Manticore Merchant Marine and beginning a regular program of at least passive sensor records of all wormholes they go though and any place with other shipping.
When Lacoon II was introduced we discovered that RMN was sending warships though lots of wormholes that that Navy had no information on and -given that it was apparently not with the cooperation of the local Astro Control in some of them- having at least historic records of what the various merchants (at least) encountered with the cooperation of an Astro Control, it could be valuable information.
Passive sensors at least and bury the recording not directly connected to the databanks of the ships along with copies of whatever they were provided by the local control (Astro Control, customs, etc) What notices warships (who's, what they looked like, sensor reading etc) would also be helpful. Not particularly polite but you "just" leave your sensors on and take readings.

Yeah, this would be a gigantic volume of information- and some months and months old if perhaps years depending on where ships are going and what a route they would take, but ONI would learn a lot of things. Would take staffing and a lot of storage and computing power but it could provide serious advantages.

Not as good as having the tactical section of a warship running training mostly on passive sensors or even military grade navigation sensors but still, data is data. Many MMM captains and officers are /and will still be former RMN.

I have an idea, but I am looking for some data first. The issue is the speed one can attain in each hyper band and -- but perhaps I am thinking of the wrong book -- the mass limit associated with the acceleration compensator.

phillies wrote:I have an idea, but I am looking for some data first. The issue is the speed one can attain in each hyper band and -- but perhaps I am thinking of the wrong book -- the mass limit associated with the acceleration compensator.

For the former, http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/95

Perhaps the RMN should save the budget to build whatever class of ship that is needed later, and for now, concentrate on significant improvements on the current designs which are already light years ahead of the competition. Focus on R&D. It is difficult to know and understand what the new threat environment is going to be against the MAlign.

(In fact, it seems to be impossible for the RMN to realize what the threat environment really is right now. Sound familiar to any of you silly Sollies?)

So, wasting the budget on ships that may not be needed, or are needed less, seems, well, wasteful.

I really think the GA should concentrate on improving existing designs even more. One reason I lobbied for SDs that are more survivable is when attacking Darius. Let's face it, the MA has to find a way to blunt Apollo's advantages. Be it jamming or whatever. So I think the RMN will need to be prepared to defeat Darius the old-fashioned way. By penetrating deeply inside the hyper limit.

Another area of improvement could be the David Taylor class support ships. Didn't David say there will be a version designed to stay with the fleet?

Those things can carry as many as eight LACs? Can you imagine the number of counter-missile pods they could eject instead. Just one of those ships could eject enough CM pods to totally blunt an alpha launch. That would free the LACs for other more devilish duties.

Brigade XO wrote:When Lacoon II was introduced we discovered that RMN was sending warships though lots of wormholes that that Navy had no information on

Erm, no. They knew everything astro control would know. They did not have anyone holding their hand from Astro control is the difference though WHY one should need Astro control to hold their hand is never explained in the stories or I have forgotten the reason. Maybe it is stated in OBS/HotQ or SVW or some such. Maybe the tidal currents go through patterns and are not constant requiring one to figure out WHERE in the pattern the grav waves are and to set your sails accordingly. It was hinted in one of the books(I forget where, maybe remembering a different author???) that one could theoretically go between one wormhole and the next anywhere in the galaxy.

cthia wrote:

Relax wrote:All those pre ERM/DDM/MDM/Pod ships will be SOLD to nations the alliance is Happy with as they are still ALL superior to any ex SLN ships they can get their hands on.

I have always wondered about this common widespread practice of giving examples of your obsolete, but still significant, tech to your allies. Is there any classified tech that could be gleaned from capturing some of the older designs?

The US does it too. We sell stripped down F-16s to allies. I always wondered if certain trade secrets can be reverse engineered or reproduced in some form or fashion from captured or downed planes.

Why sell?
1) Most weapon systems cannot hurt the USA if sold
2) What is sold is dumbed down versions with handicapped systems and its not like France would not sell them something equivalent if the USA did not. So either you make the sale or France does on the higher end. So if you want to hold a tech close and France does not make it, then you can do so, but if France does have the tech, then all bets are off as the one and ONLY thing that has been kept close by leaning on the French is Nuclear information and even that aspect is questionable... if you know what I mean.
3) IN terms of the aircraft, the platform itself has nothing ground breaking in it though not true for the F35? The avionics for a VERY long time have been what makes the aircraft, not its aerodynamics. The turbines are not able to be reverse engineered. Guidance in the right direction I suppose which most certainly does save time.
4) Just look at artillery. One can sell high caliber long range artillery all day without worrying about it truly hurting you in return. Why? The Shells guidance is what makes any artillery shell work past 15km range. Anything greater than this and good luck hitting anything without an absolute incredible expenditure in ammo/time shooting or massively increasing size of your artillery making you a nice FAT juicy s-l--o-w target to counter battery with a singular PGM. Just look at PGM artillery rounds, you can sell them etc, but no one else can take one apart and build one even if they wanted to as How you make the accelerometers is 100% the knowledge required to make the guided shells work. I get a laugh when anyone brings up Excaliber as a joint Sweden/USA project... Who is kidding who? Or the other GPS guided shells. Not one of them gets made without the USA selling the accelerometers to them that can withstand 25,000G's. And those accelerometers are made in exactly 1, uh hem, one plant in the USA and if it ever did get bombed and the people killed in said plant with the knowledge to make them, the USA could not make them either in less than a decade or maybe quicker if the old farts who retired have not taken the 2m challenge or so senile they cannot remember.