Did haven inspire Manticore's stealth recon drones?

penny wrote:See the Detweilers who certainly had a very strange mother. Who beget some very strange, but practical, formidable solutions.

Are you calling a test-tube a mother? So far as we know, all the recent Detweilers were created in the labs. The one called "father" was married to a woman, but she was not the biological mother of the cloned "sons".

I am sure the long range planning board would have been very interested if the married couple had progeny, but there is no indication that had occurred. Even the potential cross of the Detweiler and Bardasano lines would not have involved begetting.

PS: the Detweiler solutions are more insane, than just strange.

penny wrote:I would tend to think that stealthy buoys and drones inspired themselves. In the early history of the HV, I always thought navigation buoys would be broadcasting some sort of warning to traffic to keep from having to replace them because they were run over like construction cones placed in the street.

But then, belligerents would intentionally destroy them along with infrastructure. I can see some pirate using them for target practice. So, a stealthy buoy was born.

tlb wrote:The need for a stealthy recon drone is obvious. But how exactly, would a stealthy navigation buoy work? Turn off the signal and it is no longer helpful for navigation.

penny wrote:Exactly! Akin to the age of sail when you turned off the beacon in the lighthouse to let enemy ships crash into the rocky shores. Dunno how that would work in the HV. Unless everyone you expected to visit had codes to temporarily activate the beacon.

I am none too sure recon drones employed any amount of stealth in their early primitive form. You just wanted to get something out there asap to give you enough of a warning against pirates.

The earliest recon drones might have been used by survey ships and so need not be stealthy, but any armed force would want stealth from the very beginning; now that might not be considered very stealthy by modern standards. Those drones would most likely be deployed after it was already determined that the incoming ships were not friendly.

If there really are navigation buoys in the Honorverse, then it would not be practical to require tramp freighters to have the code for every system they visited. If that were the case, then a pirate capturing one of these freighters would also have all the codes.

A better way would be to turn off the buoys by a coded signal from a central system command post, when the self-defense force determines that pirates are approaching. Then if a tramp freighter familiar with the system sees that the buoys are off, they can run away. Once the pirates are gone another coded signal could turn the buoys back on.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:See the Detweilers who certainly had a very strange mother. Who beget some very strange, but practical, formidable solutions.

Are you calling a test-tube a mother? So far as we know, all the recent Detweilers were created in the labs. The one called "father" was married to a woman, but she was not the biological mother of the cloned "sons".

I am sure the long range planning board would have been very interested if the married couple had progeny, but there is no indication that had occurred. Even the potential cross of the Detweiler and Bardasano lines would not have involved begetting.

PS: the Detweiler solutions are more insane, than just strange.

The post you objected to was not supposed to be taken literally. Just as "mother of invention" isn't actually a mother. But that mother can certainly 'birth" some strange ideas. See a lot of mine?

But in the Detweilers's case the father is also the mother, in so many respects. But a stepmother is as much a mother as the biological mother; oftentimes she is more of a mother.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I would tend to think that stealthy buoys and drones inspired themselves. In the early history of the HV, I always thought navigation buoys would be broadcasting some sort of warning to traffic to keep from having to replace them because they were run over like construction cones placed in the street.

But then, belligerents would intentionally destroy them along with infrastructure. I can see some pirate using them for target practice. So, a stealthy buoy was born.

tlb wrote:The need for a stealthy recon drone is obvious. But how exactly, would a stealthy navigation buoy work? Turn off the signal and it is no longer helpful for navigation.

penny wrote:Exactly! Akin to the age of sail when you turned off the beacon in the lighthouse to let enemy ships crash into the rocky shores. Dunno how that would work in the HV. Unless everyone you expected to visit had codes to temporarily activate the beacon.

I am none too sure recon drones employed any amount of stealth in their early primitive form. You just wanted to get something out there asap to give you enough of a warning against pirates.

The earliest recon drones might have been used by survey ships and so need not be stealthy, but any armed force would want stealth from the very beginning; now that might not be considered very stealthy by modern standards. Those drones would most likely be deployed after it was already determined that the incoming ships were not friendly.

If there really are navigation buoys in the Honorverse, then it would not be practical to require tramp freighters to have the code for every system they visited. If that were the case, then a pirate capturing one of these freighters would also have all the codes.

A better way would be to turn off the buoys by a coded signal from a central system command post, when the self-defense force determines that pirates are approaching. Then if a tramp freighter familiar with the system sees that the buoys are off, they can run away. Once the pirates are gone another coded signal could turn the buoys back on.

I agree. I like your solution better. Whatever works.

But my point is meant in a time when the HV was just an infant. When new systems would oftentimes be poor. I would imagine they used research drones (or survey drones) as recon drones in the beginning when they first realized they had a piracy problem. Research drones would not need to be stealthy. But you use what you have until you can do better.

Relax wrote:"stealth" is a meaningless word. Everyone's drones have been "stealth". Some are more stealthy than others. Its just like claimed "stealth" today in fighter jets... what frequencies? What return value is "stealth"?

Then you get paradoxical effects like large aircraft are stealthier than small aircraft due to RF phenomena.

penny wrote:But my point is meant in a time when the HV was just an infant. When new systems would oftentimes be poor. I would imagine they used research drones (or survey drones) as recon drones in the beginning when they first realized they had a piracy problem. Research drones would not need to be stealthy. But you use what you have until you can do better.

I do not agree; a system is only going to have a recon drone to check whether friend or foe, if it has a self-defense force. If it has a self-defense force, then it is much more efficient to send a LAC (or frigate or whatever manned ship the force has) to investigate. The manned ship can find as much information as a drone and if the unfriendly is small, it can be chased away immediately. If it is bigger, then decisions need to be made.

What about a system without a self-dense force? Then a recon drone is superfluous, because there is nothing important that can be done with the information. The pirates will have no problem finding the inhabited planet.

tlb wrote:The pirates will have no problem finding the inhabited planet.

Unless it's the GNS Francis Mueller, whose astrogators can't find the biggest gas giant in the system.

tlb wrote:What about a system without a self-dense force? Then a recon drone is superfluous, because there is nothing important that can be done with the information. The pirates will have no problem finding the inhabited planet.

Actually, I will disagree here and agree with penny. You've described the logical, rational decision that the military would make.

That's not what the politicians will demand. They will demand the military "do something" and sending a survey drone might be it. It would still be un-actionable, but try to explain that to the politicians.

tlb wrote:What about a system without a self-dense force? Then a recon drone is superfluous, because there is nothing important that can be done with the information. The pirates will have no problem finding the inhabited planet.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Actually, I will disagree here and agree with penny. You've described the logical, rational decision that the military would make.

That's not what the politicians will demand. They will demand the military "do something" and sending a survey drone might be it. It would still be un-actionable, but try to explain that to the politicians.

I actually do not disagree with that, but the point I will continue to make is that it is superfluous, because there is nothing that can be done to stop the pirates. So send all the drones that the politicians demand, perhaps the pirates will leave enough money to buy more.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:What about a system without a self-dense force? Then a recon drone is superfluous, because there is nothing important that can be done with the information. The pirates will have no problem finding the inhabited planet.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Actually, I will disagree here and agree with penny. You've described the logical, rational decision that the military would make.

That's not what the politicians will demand. They will demand the military "do something" and sending a survey drone might be it. It would still be un-actionable, but try to explain that to the politicians.

I actually do not disagree with that, but the point I will continue to make is that it is superfluous, because there is nothing that can be done to stop the pirates. So send all the drones that the politicians demand, perhaps the pirates will leave enough money to buy more.

Perhaps you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. In the beginning of the HV some systems - some systems currently - were too poor to afford a naval budget. Heck, some systems didn't think they even needed a naval budget for anything other than for planetary use. And when they did find out, it probably took decades before developing/purchasing a single frigate.

Piracy is something I imagine that spread slowly. Because ships didn't have a WH to use, and the current ability to hit Warp 999.


One day they simply woke up and had a piracy problem. And you would want to know asap when the pirates arrived. Especially if you had orbital farms with civilians on it. Then they, or very important VIPs like Hauptman, can leave orbit with their beautiful young daughters and hide planetside. Yada yada yada.