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Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's

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Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by KTHaven13   » Sat Jun 04, 2022 7:17 pm

KTHaven13
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Drone Command LACs are (insert latest or near latest LAC type preferably from Manticore) LACs that are just a plain LAC, but with way more EWAR capability, way more Point Defense, and thicker Sidewalls, Bow Walls, and Stern Walls. They may even have their GRASER stripped out of them to replace it with more point defense and EWAR emitters. Drone Control LACs (DCLAC) are built to control Drone LACs. They have high powered Gravitic FTL communications systems, and way more command and control links, providing a real time long range missile, energy weapon, and drone controller at a great distance form the mothership. They are designed to hold up to 25 crew members and are built to be more survivable than any other LAC. Their EWAR suite and Point Defense systems would be heavier than even some Destroyers and Cruisers. They would have no missile launchers on them, but instead would replace any missile launchers a combat LAC would wield with Counter Missile launchers galore and more Point Defense. These would be strictly designed to survive a relatively tough engagement at ranges that were closer to the enemy, and command and control Drone LACs. They are not designed to attack directly, but be a command node for multiple combat attack systems. This would extend the range of the CLAC’s attack capability, and also give the CLAC commander an ability to station massive EWAR and Attack Salvos in multiple directions around a given area. These ships and their Drone LACs could also be used to “hide” their Carrier in the shadow of all their Wedges, like a massive smoke screen, at greater ranges, without sacrificing Destroyers. They could also be used to shore up small missile sized gaps in an Anti-Missile Defense Formation’s Wedge “Wall”.

Drone LACs are what they say they are… Drones. Take out ALL of the life support, take out all of the crew spaces, take out everything that a human needs to survive inside a LAC… and then fill that space with more weapons, point defense, and/or EWAR equipment. Shove a nice powerful computer into it, and pack it to the gills with attack and defense stuff. In fact… once could build 2 variants. One is basically a normal LAC minus the crew areas and plus more of everything stated above, and the other is basically a Missile Pod with a Grazer mounted in the middle of it, Node Rings bolted onto the outside of it, and some Side, Bow, and Stern Wall generators and Point Defense strapped onto it. The second one is more that that, but basically it’s that. Take a LAC hull, and gut it of all LAC sized missiles. Keep the GRAZER in the middle, rip out all Crew spaces, and fill every available space with EWAR and Point Defense systems. Now… where the LAC missiles typically sit… replace that with the missile tubes found in Missile Pods, and point them along the same axis as the Grazer, as they’ll probably be about the same length… now wrap as many of those tubes around the Grazer array as is physically possible. Viola, mobile Missile Pods, with on-board protection against proximity soft-kills, that can be used to attack ships at close range like a LAC, swung around and rolled to protect other ships behind them with a wall of Wedges, and that have the added nasty surprise of actually just BEING a LAC with giant Grazer in the middle, and all controlled at a distance by individual Drone Command LACs. They could also be automated somewhat as well, so that they can carry out programmed attack runs on their own automatically when a certain parameter is met… like their Command LAC being destroyed, so they acquire the enemy ship they were being targeted on anyway, and they go and attack it without further orders. These ships could also reduce the needs for Grav Plates, as they no longer have humans aboard them, so all Grav Plates would be necessary for is to reduce inertial strain on the equipment and the ship.

One could even strap the Ghost Rider stealth systems into both of these ships, borrow the systems from the Recon Drones and make them for a LAC hull, to improve their survivability.
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Re: Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jun 06, 2022 9:06 am

Theemile
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KTHaven13 wrote:Drone Command LACs are (insert latest or near latest LAC type preferably from Manticore) LACs that are just a plain LAC, but with way more EWAR capability, way more Point Defense, and thicker Sidewalls, Bow Walls, and Stern Walls. They may even have their GRASER stripped out of them to replace it with more point defense and EWAR emitters. Drone Control LACs (DCLAC) are built to control Drone LACs. They have high powered Gravitic FTL communications systems, and way more command and control links, providing a real time long range missile, energy weapon, and drone controller at a great distance form the mothership. They are designed to hold up to 25 crew members and are built to be more survivable than any other LAC. Their EWAR suite and Point Defense systems would be heavier than even some Destroyers and Cruisers. They would have no missile launchers on them, but instead would replace any missile launchers a combat LAC would wield with Counter Missile launchers galore and more Point Defense. These would be strictly designed to survive a relatively tough engagement at ranges that were closer to the enemy, and command and control Drone LACs. They are not designed to attack directly, but be a command node for multiple combat attack systems. This would extend the range of the CLAC’s attack capability, and also give the CLAC commander an ability to station massive EWAR and Attack Salvos in multiple directions around a given area. These ships and their Drone LACs could also be used to “hide” their Carrier in the shadow of all their Wedges, like a massive smoke screen, at greater ranges, without sacrificing Destroyers. They could also be used to shore up small missile sized gaps in an Anti-Missile Defense Formation’s Wedge “Wall”.

Drone LACs are what they say they are… Drones. Take out ALL of the life support, take out all of the crew spaces, take out everything that a human needs to survive inside a LAC… and then fill that space with more weapons, point defense, and/or EWAR equipment. Shove a nice powerful computer into it, and pack it to the gills with attack and defense stuff. In fact… once could build 2 variants. One is basically a normal LAC minus the crew areas and plus more of everything stated above, and the other is basically a Missile Pod with a Grazer mounted in the middle of it, Node Rings bolted onto the outside of it, and some Side, Bow, and Stern Wall generators and Point Defense strapped onto it. The second one is more that that, but basically it’s that. Take a LAC hull, and gut it of all LAC sized missiles. Keep the GRAZER in the middle, rip out all Crew spaces, and fill every available space with EWAR and Point Defense systems. Now… where the LAC missiles typically sit… replace that with the missile tubes found in Missile Pods, and point them along the same axis as the Grazer, as they’ll probably be about the same length… now wrap as many of those tubes around the Grazer array as is physically possible. Viola, mobile Missile Pods, with on-board protection against proximity soft-kills, that can be used to attack ships at close range like a LAC, swung around and rolled to protect other ships behind them with a wall of Wedges, and that have the added nasty surprise of actually just BEING a LAC with giant Grazer in the middle, and all controlled at a distance by individual Drone Command LACs. They could also be automated somewhat as well, so that they can carry out programmed attack runs on their own automatically when a certain parameter is met… like their Command LAC being destroyed, so they acquire the enemy ship they were being targeted on anyway, and they go and attack it without further orders. These ships could also reduce the needs for Grav Plates, as they no longer have humans aboard them, so all Grav Plates would be necessary for is to reduce inertial strain on the equipment and the ship.

One could even strap the Ghost Rider stealth systems into both of these ships, borrow the systems from the Recon Drones and make them for a LAC hull, to improve their survivability.



Hi KTHaven13, welcome to The Bar - have your favorite virtual beverage on us.

I hate to be mean to the newbies, but...

Unfortunately, your unmanned recon LAC is one of the Dead horses - sorry it didn't make my list above. Similiar concepts have come up repeatedly over the last 25 years. David has knocked AI powered and/or FTL controlled ships many times - mostly because 1) he has other universes with that tech, and 2) His story telling style is PoV characters, and AI/Remote control warships don't allow that.

Your Command LAC is technically a HAC - a Heavy Attack Craft (the dividing line is ~30 Ktons), and non-hyper craft are considered un-efficient in that range. Such ships are also known as Corvettes, and are built by some smaller powers, or in a niche (One of the Manticorian Cartels (Dillingham) had 2 Corvettes to defend a mining operation in Schyuler because of the Silesian rules on private hyper combatants.) David has said that no major powers will build HACs.

https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/137/1/

https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/136/1/

https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/76/1/

The RHN used a version of your idea - their Recon LAC was a standard LAC with no weapons, but launched drones - PRH drones in 1920 didn't have FTL on their own. So.... a Primitive FTL set was put in the Recon LACs and they controlled the Drones via Light speed links, and used their large computers to crunch the data, then send back processed data to the fleet via low bandwidth FTL.

This step isn't required by the RMN and allies - their drones have more range and built in FTL with larger bandwidth. So a Recon LAC is a waste in the RMN, as their much smaller drones with much longer capabilities and range do everything they need as a scouting function.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by Relax   » Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:34 am

Relax
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Posts: 3106
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KTHaven13 wrote:Drone Command LACs are (insert latest or near latest LAC type preferably from Manticore) LACs that are just a plain LAC, but with way more EWAR capability, way more Point Defense, and thicker Sidewalls, Bow Walls, and Stern Walls. They may even have their GRASER stripped out of them to replace it with more point defense and EWAR emitters.


Welcome to the bar. Keep the posts coming. I am here often for a week or so at a time and then my family/job pull me away for months at a time. So I post in spurts.

Yes, logically that all makes sense and in fact, DW(David Weber), RFC(runsforcelery), 1st space lord is his name here on the forums, but one must also understand an author is trying to sell books with human interaction in them to keep the reader interested in buying and reading said books.

But, he has been loosening his grip on the AI/Drone bugaloo in recent books.

Personally, I just call what you are describing what it is... a counter missile pod(which DW has also said is not viable, even though it is the obvious alpha missile pod launch counter) mated to a Hasta drone, or Ghost drone or a Keyhole(60,000tons) or Keyhole II drone(120,000 tons) seen in latest books :lol: The final revitalization of drones as reality IMO are Torpedo Grasers just hanging out for months at a time waiting.

Apparently, said Dead Horse while comatose for a decade has started to twitch more than a single leg in the last few books. :twisted: :mrgreen: :oops: :lol:
_________
Tally Ho!
Relax
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Re: Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by munroburton   » Mon Jun 06, 2022 11:41 am

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Theemile wrote:Unfortunately, your unmanned recon LAC is one of the Dead horses - sorry it didn't make my list above. Similiar concepts have come up repeatedly over the last 25 years. David has knocked AI powered and/or FTL controlled ships many times - mostly because 1) he has other universes with that tech, and 2) His story telling style is PoV characters, and AI/Remote control warships don't allow that.


He's bringing them forwards anyway. We're told in TEiF that GA R&D has been looking at unmanned LACs. To be fair, he didn't actually rule them out definitively, the pearl on unmanned LACs says probably not, rather than absolutely not.

“Oh, believe me, it’s something Bolthole’s been looking at for a while,” Honor replied. “Admiral Foraker and Admiral Hemphill are busy evolving an entirely new LAC doctrine using unmanned, expendable platforms. I understand what they’re looking at is basically a constellation of unmanned, stripped down Strikes and Ferrets, each controlled by a single command LAC through FTL links. Without crews onboard, they could accelerate a lot faster, which ought to make them far better at penetrating someone’s defenses, and the idea is to push them out closer to the enemy, use them to launch mass LAC strikes on enemy formations, without ever exposing our personnel to defensive fire. I’m sure the ‘Demonic Duo’ is also looking at ways to combine them with the multidrive counter-missile they have on the drawing board to push our missile defense zone even farther out, as well.


The lack of a Katana-analog being mentioned leads me to suspect it may provide the command-LAC template. It doesn't need to be larger, it just needs to give up some magazine space to the equivalent of ten MK23E computers or whatever.

At this point they could go either way with the FTL coms; option A is basically copying the Apollo setup, where only the command bird has FTL links and uses lasers to communicate with the other platforms... or option B, where the LACs all keep their FTL coms and use it to communicate with each other.
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Re: Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:58 pm

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munroburton wrote:[

“Oh, believe me, it’s something Bolthole’s been looking at for a while,” Honor replied. “Admiral Foraker and Admiral Hemphill are busy evolving an entirely new LAC doctrine using unmanned, expendable platforms. I understand what they’re looking at is basically a constellation of unmanned, stripped down Strikes and Ferrets, each controlled by a single command LAC through FTL links. Without crews onboard, they could accelerate a lot faster, which ought to make them far better at penetrating someone’s defenses, and the idea is to push them out closer to the enemy, use them to launch mass LAC strikes on enemy formations, without ever exposing our personnel to defensive fire. I’m sure the ‘Demonic Duo’ is also looking at ways to combine them with the multidrive counter-missile they have on the drawing board to push our missile defense zone even farther out, as well.


The lack of a Katana-analog being mentioned leads me to suspect it may provide the command-LAC template. It doesn't need to be larger, it just needs to give up some magazine space to the equivalent of ten MK23E computers or whatever.

At this point they could go either way with the FTL coms; option A is basically copying the Apollo setup, where only the command bird has FTL links and uses lasers to communicate with the other platforms... or option B, where the LACs all keep their FTL coms and use it to communicate with each other.


I missed that in TEIF - do you have a chapter/page?

Someone on the bar years ago had a sig - "Logic - the way to be wrong with confidence!"
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by munroburton   » Mon Jun 06, 2022 3:04 pm

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Theemile wrote:I missed that in TEIF - do you have a chapter/page?

Someone on the bar years ago had a sig - "Logic - the way to be wrong with confidence!"


It's squeezed into the aftermath of Grand Fleet's first salvo, when they're digesting how effective Galton's anti-missile defenses were. There's a preceding paragraph which talks a bit more about those multidrive counter-missiles, but nothing more on the unmanned LACs.

For such a short textdump, it creates so many potential implications. :D
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Re: Drone LAC's and Drone Command LAC's
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jun 06, 2022 3:13 pm

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munroburton wrote:
Theemile wrote:I missed that in TEIF - do you have a chapter/page?

Someone on the bar years ago had a sig - "Logic - the way to be wrong with confidence!"


It's squeezed into the aftermath of Grand Fleet's first salvo, when they're digesting how effective Galton's anti-missile defenses were. There's a preceding paragraph which talks a bit more about those multidrive counter-missiles, but nothing more on the unmanned LACs.

For such a short textdump, it creates so many potential implications. :D


And completely changes 100s of previous text exchanges on the Bar from the Author.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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