Sonja Hemphill

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:The point she was trying to make to the college students is that someone who had to be choked to see the advantages of Apollo isn't the best person to use Apollo. Ever!

Actually there is zero evidence that White Haven didn't, or wouldn't see the advantages of Apollo as soon as it was / would be developed.

We never see or hear about his reaction to it because he'd been out of active service for 7 years before it came around!. He was a civilian by that point. (Sure, as 1st Lord of the Admiralty he was presumably briefed on it before it reached active deployment in the fleet -- but we've no record of his initial reaction. However, given that he had fought with MDMs, and now well understood their issue with long range accuracy, I suspect he'd have reacted with joy to giving up 1/3 of his offensive MDMs to get even a 2x improvement in long range accuracy and effectiveness from the remainder (and of course we know that Apollo turned out to be significantly better than twice as effective)

So your niece appears to be either assuming facts not in evidence, or else confusing his reaction to the original MDM with a reaction to Apollo.


Of course we know he was entrusted with the first major use of MDMs, despite initially unthinkingly failing to see their advantages... (blinded by their downsides; being much larger, so yo can't carry as many plus being unable to fire from existing ships) Which makes is even harder to believe that he'd be denied Apollo even if he had somehow had an initial failure to appreciate its advantages.

"I was not assuming facts not in evidence; I was allowing the logical line of reasoning to play itself out."
— T.J.

****** *

Let us set the stage properly.

My niece met these college students at her piano recital at 12-yrs-old. She was a fair bit tall for her age and drop dead gorgeous; therefore nature took its course and several of the students became enamored with her. The HV came up as a subject and they began to discuss it. Neither of them believed she could truly understand the HV. The battle was on and war was waged. It turned out that one of the students didn't have a grasp of calculus and my niece didn't understand how he could be a freshman in college pursuing an advanced degree in mathematics without having tackled calculus or trig in high school. And yatta yatta yatta to her dismay. Then one of them -- who didn't have a grasp of any advanced mathematics because his course study was business education -- said that it didn't matter because advanced mathematics isn't going to be useful in understanding the HV.

Knowing my niece, she would have been swallowing her tongue in dismay. At any rate she told them that that is not true and pointed out how Honor had a problem with much needed higher mathematics. "As a tactician in the HV, math is essential, it is a prerequisite," she told them.

And that is what led to their battle over the top ten tacticians and strategists in the HV. At the recital it simply began as an act of tossing out names. All of the college students were picking Hamish for the number one or two spot. My niece disagreed with rating Hamish so highly and they thought she was crazy. They immediately questioned her intelligence (big mistake). And the proposal for a list was born.

She suspected that there was a fair bit of male chauvinism involved, and an arrogance of superiority because they were in college. At that point they didn't know that she was only 12. They thought she was in High School.

She always agreed that Hamish was talented. Very early on she said "He deserves to be in the top ten on both lists. But he will not rank so high on either of my lists, and he may end up near the bottom of either my tactics or strategists list."

She used her prior conversation about prerequisites as fuel for her discussions about Hamish ... paraphrased ...

"All throughout grade school the curriculum teaches students that subjects build atop each other. They teach you it is recommended that you NOT take calculus until you have mastered algebra, trigonometry, and maybe even geometry."

Unless you are one of those rare students who can skin the cat simultaneously. 'Ahem' Myself and my niece and probably the entire forum. My niece had completed all of her math requirements before she even entered high school.

"And so it is with Apollo. It is recommended that you have some experience with MDMs, before you can fully appreciate Apollo; or that you at least understand them. If the truth is even worse than that because you were at one point actually against MDMs... well, then, cheer up, all is not lost, you can get yourself a tutor, and maybe even someone to shake some sense into you. Hey, it worked for Hamish ...

Discounting Honor, Hamish would never be my first choice to trust with utilizing Apollo in a way that is worthy of the name."



And! Do consider that textev says the abilities of Apollo haven't even been scratched. I agree.

And that nifty little magic elf the MK23-E is a good place to start scratching.

But my niece and I will always question whether Hamish is the best officer to do the scratching. He can be at the brainstorming sessions that my niece and I imagine went on between Honor and her staff. But my niece says that if Hamish attends he has to keep his mouth shut so that he won't slow down the session! Because he is apt to be downright sh cked and lost initially. LOL

My niece and I have always imagined the cream of the crop of the Queen's greatest tacticians at a brainstorming session together.

I'd pay good money just to sit in on a tactical expose between Honor Harrington and Alice Truman. Together, they could scratch the heck out of Apollo.

My niece and I both love Alice Truman but hate that she was only given a CLAC command.

"I would really pay good money for those tickets and I expect the venue will be sold out. I don't think I would care to see Hamish," I said.

"I would pay good money to see Hamish," my niece countered to my dismay, "but only because I'd be too afraid I'd miss a certain cameo appearance if I don't."

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually there is zero evidence that White Haven didn't, or wouldn't see the advantages of Apollo as soon as it was / would be developed.

Actually that is incorrect. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence in the form of his lack of appreciation for MDMs. Circumstantial evidence is also evidence. It is simply circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence leads to higher conviction rates.

"Uncle, tell them to put their money where their mouth is. Have them do as we did. Distill the top ten tacticians / strategists list down to the top five, with an emphasis on Apollo. Hamish will fail to make the list every time when the squeeze is on. Especially considering the newcomers like Meghan Petersen."

Also, as she pointed out (rather humorously I might add) ...

"It is ironic they don't understand that Hamish could be so lacking in fully appreciating Apollo, when every single one of them except Fleet Admiral kzt didn't understand that Apollo can not be mousetrapped."

" ... ... Yeah! ... "




She read the thread.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:cthia wrote----------
The point she was trying to make to the college students is that someone who had to be choked to see the advantages of Apollo isn't the best person to use Apollo. Ever!
----------
Actually there is zero evidence that White Haven didn't, or wouldn't see the advantages of Apollo as soon as it was / would be developed.

We never see or hear about his reaction to it because he'd been out of active service for 7 years before it came around!. He was a civilian by that point. (Sure, as 1st Lord of the Admiralty he was presumably briefed on it before it reached active deployment in the fleet -- but we've no record of his initial reaction. However, given that he had fought with MDMs, and now well understood their issue with long range accuracy, I suspect he'd have reacted with joy to giving up 1/3 of his offensive MDMs to get even a 2x improvement in long range accuracy and effectiveness from the remainder (and of course we know that Apollo turned out to be significantly better than twice as effective)

So your niece appears to be either assuming facts not in evidence, or else confusing his reaction to the original MDM with a reaction to Apollo.


Of course we know he was entrusted with the first major use of MDMs, despite initially unthinkingly failing to see their advantages... (blinded by their downsides; being much larger, so yo can't carry as many plus being unable to fire from existing ships) Which makes is even harder to believe that he'd be denied Apollo even if he had somehow had an initial failure to appreciate its advantages.

"I was not assuming facts not in evidence; I was allowing the logical line of reasoning to play itself out."
— T.J.

****** *

[snip]

She used her prior conversation about prerequisites as fuel for her discussions about Hamish ... paraphrased ...

"All throughout grade school the curriculum teaches students that subjects build atop each other. They teach you it is recommended that you NOT take calculus until you have mastered algebra, trigonometry, and maybe even geometry."

Unless you are one of those rare students who can skin the cat simultaneously. 'Ahem' Myself and my niece and probably the entire forum. My niece had completed all of her math requirements before she even entered high school.

"And so it is with Apollo. It is recommended that you have some experience with MDMs, before you can fully appreciate Apollo; or that you at least understand them. If the truth is even worse than that because you were at one point actually against MDMs... well, then, cheer up, all is not lost, you can get yourself a tutor, and maybe even someone to shake some sense into you. Hey, it worked for Hamish ...

Discounting Honor, Hamish would never be my first choice to trust with utilizing Apollo in a way that is worthy of the name."

Okay - I can see her argument, and I think I now understand it. Your earlier post seems to have done a poor job of summarizing it.

As I understand it she's saying that before Hamish had gotten experience with MDMs, before he'd learned them, her opinion is that he'd have been no more likely to appreciate the MDM + Apollo combination than he historically was to appreciation MDM's alone (and yes, allowing for a bit of editorial hyperbole, he did have to be "choked" into seeing the advantages MDMs).

I'm not sure I entirely agree. Even with only using SDMs Hamish had first-hand experience at how missile accuracy dropped as the range increased (even SDMs end up with a 23+ second one-way lag at the edge of their range). The prospect of having 1/7th that lag even out at 65 million km should have been quite appealing. (But that's just my opinion -- and he might, somehow, have unthinkingly overlooked what FTL fire control meant for missile accuracy and effectiveness)
However, your niece is making a reasonable case for her opinion; and her case, as you've now explained it, isn't assuming facts not in evidence.


Your precis of her argument, on the other hand, presented Hamish as "someone who had to be choked to see the advantages of Apollo". That's written as if it was a fact, rather than an opinion about what would have, or even what did, happen. And there is no evidence for that "fact".



Now, even with this more full presentation of her argument, I'm not seeing how it extends to your claim earlier in the thread that if Hamish had been brought back for the 2nd war that he'd have not understood the benefits of Apollo, or somehow used it inappropriately. By that point he had learned the prerequisite knowledge of MDM usage, was the RMN's most experienced user of them in fact -- and so he now had the basis to understand Apollo's great benefits to MDMs.

cthia wrote:But it may not have been the best use of the idiom since Honor does quite literally "have the finger." LOL

Honor is above everyone else, even in the "having the finger" category. Because, you know....

she shot them with her finger

cthia wrote:Actually that is incorrect. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence in the form of his lack of appreciation for MDMs. Circumstantial evidence is also evidence. It is simply circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence leads to higher conviction rates.

[cut]

Discounting Honor, Hamish would never be my first choice to trust with utilizing Apollo in a way that is worthy of the name."

And! Do consider that textev says the abilities of Apollo haven't even been scratched. I agree.

That's a slight mischaracterisation of textev. It's accurate, but misleading.

Yes, textev shows us that the capabilities of Apollo have barely been scratched. Yes, it shows us that Hamish was one of those voices.

But he was one among the voice of the overwhelming majority. There's in fact no textev saying anyone thought that the capabilities were far above that. Honor used them above the known capabilities, but as far as we know, she could've been desperate and bluffing. I don´t happen to think that is -- I think she honestly did expect more from Apollo than anyone else did, having been the only CO to use them -- but that's an inference, not factual evidence. Consequently, there's no way to predict what another CO would have thought had they been in command of the Battle of Lovat.

So I end up agreeing with your niece: there were better COs in 1921 than Hamish. And I probably agree that Truman would be #1 on that list. Heck, if you put Truman, Gold Peak, Harrington, and probably Habenstrage in a room for a couple of hours, they'd probably solve the war without firing a shot!

But that's my opinion, based on interpretation and inference, not factual evidence.

What we can conclude is that if White Haven had been given Apollo, he would have won the first war and he'd have persecuted the Battle of Lovat as effectively as Honor did.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Actually that is incorrect. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence in the form of his lack of appreciation for MDMs. Circumstantial evidence is also evidence. It is simply circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence leads to higher conviction rates.

[cut]

Discounting Honor, Hamish would never be my first choice to trust with utilizing Apollo in a way that is worthy of the name."

And! Do consider that textev says the abilities of Apollo haven't even been scratched. I agree.

That's a slight mischaracterisation of textev. It's accurate, but misleading.

Yes, textev shows us that the capabilities of Apollo have barely been scratched. Yes, it shows us that Hamish was one of those voices.

But he was one among the voice of the overwhelming majority. There's in fact no textev saying anyone thought that the capabilities were far above that. Honor used them above the known capabilities, but as far as we know, she could've been desperate and bluffing. I don´t happen to think that is -- I think she honestly did expect more from Apollo than anyone else did, having been the only CO to use them -- but that's an inference, not factual evidence. Consequently, there's no way to predict what another CO would have thought had they been in command of the Battle of Lovat.

So I end up agreeing with your niece: there were better COs in 1921 than Hamish. And I probably agree that Truman would be #1 on that list. Heck, if you put Truman, Gold Peak, Harrington, and probably Habenstrage in a room for a couple of hours, they'd probably solve the war without firing a shot!

But that's my opinion, based on interpretation and inference, not factual evidence.

What we can conclude is that if White Haven had been given Apollo, he would have won the first war and he'd have persecuted the Battle of Lovat as effectively as Honor did.

Dunno if I can agree with part of that, I certainly can't agree it was a mischaracterization. But I would be hard pressed to believe that Sonja didn't expect a lot out of Apollo. So did Honor. Honor was the religious type that always RTFM. I often wondered if Honor and Sonja ever had a private brainstorming session.


An aside: Consider the moment of time when Apollo was freshly installed on 8th Fleet's ships before Honor first used Apollo on the Havenites. Apollo's existence was a secret. That meant that the entire crew complement of 8th Fleet were privy to the most highly classified naval secret in Manticoran history. My point is that a lowly Ensign may have known more about Apollo than a Captain? At one point Harkness was just a Chief Petty Officer?

cthia wrote:Actually that is incorrect. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence in the form of his lack of appreciation for MDMs.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, it shows us that Hamish was one of those voices.

There is no way that Hamish's distrust of multi-drive missiles can be used to characterize his appreciation of Apollo. His instinctive distrust was due to his long standing disagreements with Sonja Hemphill, over such things as the grav-lance. However it was only due to the assassination of the Prime Minister and the resulting political turmoil, that he failed to win the war against Haven while using the combination of LAC's and MDM's. That alone means he could have been successful with Apollo.

The point about Apollo is that any successful commander could win a war using them.

PS:I am not sure about this statement: "That meant that the entire crew complement of 8th Fleet were privy to the most highly classified naval secret in Manticoran history". Certainly everyone over some pay-grade would have knowledge of the system; the higher the pay, the more the knowledge. However there will be some that have no need to know and therefore should not have any knowledge, except that the ship carries missiles. After first use by the fleet though, there will be wider knowledge; but still without total detail.

tlb wrote:PS:I am not sure about this statement: "That meant that the entire crew complement of 8th Fleet were privy to the most highly classified naval secret in Manticoran history". Certainly everyone over some pay-grade would have knowledge of the system; the higher the pay, the more the knowledge. However there will be some that have no need to know and therefore should not have any knowledge, except that the ship carries missiles. After first use by the fleet though, there will be wider knowledge; but still without total detail.

Well it wouldn't just be pay grade.
There are presumably relatively junior enlisted people, overseen by NCO, serving on the Apollo equipped SD(P)s who'd be involved in maintaining the Keyhole II and Apollo Control Missiles. And even fairly junior folks in the tactical department would need to have been trained on Apollo's use. They'd have more need to know than, say, the highest ranking communications or quartermaster officers (even if the later likely have noticeably higher pay grades)

So yeah, until it became general knowledge there'd be plenty of folks even on the Apollo equipped ships who wouldn't have any need to know about it. Cooks, small craft maintenance, marines, comm officers, significant parts of engineering, etc. etc.

And given that it's an entirely offensive system, would they even have needed to brief in the senior officers of the fleet's CLAC, cruisers, and destroyers? After all, how could that information assist them in doing their job?

OTOH if Honor wants to do full up fleet maneuvers or simulations that utilize Apollo she pretty much does has to brief in every captain, XO, tac departments member, and bridge and auxiliary control crews, of every ship in her fleet, -- as they'd all be able to see what Apollo is doing in those sims.

cthia wrote:Dunno if I can agree with part of that, I certainly can't agree it was a mischaracterization. But I would be hard pressed to believe that Sonja didn't expect a lot out of Apollo. So did Honor. Honor was the religious type that always RTFM. I often wondered if Honor and Sonja ever had a private brainstorming session.

Of course Sonja did. But Sonja was also arrogant, and she expected a lot. Don't forget what she expected of the grav-lance. Though maybe the nearly 20 T-years since have tempered her arrogance a little. The WDB she chaired did receive quite a tongue-lashing from Commander Harrington after she successfully used the grav-lance against Sirius.

The problem of Honor being able to read the manual was that she was writing the manual. There was no manual for use of Apollo before Honor, because no one had actually used the thing in a battle. Sure, they'd fired some prototypes and tested the FTL link and just how effective the AIs in the ACM appeared to be. They probably did a full up test of trying to attack a Harrington II with its full defences up and Loreleis, to gather result. But until that was done against a real RHN CO who was trying his or her damned best to survive, it wouldn't be real.

Honor would have been briefed in the expectations of the design team. Her tac team was probably briefed in even more detail, to let them have a fair assessment. And she probably did fire a few pod-loads in Trevor's Star before setting out for Lovat.

As I said in the AAC thread, I believe she was actually conducting even more exercises specifically with Apollo when the Battle of Manticore was called. That's how she knew that her shots from 73 million km out were still going to inflict significant damage on Chin. She knew she wasn't bluffing against Chin.

But she thought she was bluffing against Tourville. And yet we know that Apollo is effective to 33% more range than what she was to him.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The problem of Honor being able to read the manual was that she was writing the manual. There was no manual for use of Apollo before Honor, because no one had actually used the thing in a battle. Sure, they'd fired some prototypes and tested the FTL link and just how effective the AIs in the ACM appeared to be. They probably did a full up test of trying to attack a Harrington II with its full defences up and Loreleis, to gather result. But until that was done against a real RHN CO who was trying his or her damned best to survive, it wouldn't be real.

Honor would have been briefed in the expectations of the design team. Her tac team was probably briefed in even more detail, to let them have a fair assessment. And she probably did fire a few pod-loads in Trevor's Star before setting out for Lovat.

As I said in the AAC thread, I believe she was actually conducting even more exercises specifically with Apollo when the Battle of Manticore was called. That's how she knew that her shots from 73 million km out were still going to inflict significant damage on Chin. She knew she wasn't bluffing against Chin.

But she thought she was bluffing against Tourville. And yet we know that Apollo is effective to 33% more range than what she was to him.

It also occurs to me that we're treating Apollo as a static system.

Yes, at the Battle of Spindle Apollo was capable of operating off lightspeed control links from cruisers, rather than FTL control links from Keyhole IIs. And yes, in UH at Beowulf it was able to engage autonomously at extreme ranges via self-coordination between the 23Es.

We've been talking about that like those were capabilities that the Apollo systems always had, but which the author chose to hold back from us for dramatic reasons.


But what if Apollo has been evolving; getting incremental upgrades to improve its capabilities over time? What if Honor was correct, and that with the Apollos in her pods that day she was bluffing against Tourville at the BoM. Then, in response, the 23E design was tweaked to eventually allow/include lateral data links to other 23Es in the same salvo, and their computer's code rewritten to create that beyond control range effectiveness multiplier -- specifically so that if that situation arose again the commander wouldn't need to bluff.

Yes the 6-7 months between the Battles of Manticore and Spindle isn't a huge amount of time. But then it's nearly another year between Spindle and Beowulf - so you've got 18 months or more to go from Honor's bluff to Mycroft-less Apollo at Beowulf. So there does seem to be time to evolve the system -- and the changes to the missiles themselves seem pretty minor, at most a few extra radio links to talk to standard fire control and to other 23Es. The potential code changes would be the biggest part.

Jonathan_S wrote:It also occurs to me that we're treating Apollo as a static system.

Yes, at the Battle of Spindle Apollo was capable of operating off lightspeed control links from cruisers, rather than FTL control links from Keyhole IIs. And yes, in UH at Beowulf it was able to engage autonomously at extreme ranges via self-coordination between the 23Es.

We've been talking about that like those were capabilities that the Apollo systems always had, but which the author chose to hold back from us for dramatic reasons.


But what if Apollo has been evolving; getting incremental upgrades to improve its capabilities over time? What if Honor was correct, and that with the Apollos in her pods that day she was bluffing against Tourville at the BoM. Then, in response, the 23E design was tweaked to eventually allow/include lateral data links to other 23Es in the same salvo, and their computer's code rewritten to create that beyond control range effectiveness multiplier -- specifically so that if that situation arose again the commander wouldn't need to bluff.

Yes the 6-7 months between the Battles of Manticore and Spindle isn't a huge amount of time. But then it's nearly another year between Spindle and Beowulf - so you've got 18 months or more to go from Honor's bluff to Mycroft-less Apollo at Beowulf. So there does seem to be time to evolve the system -- and the changes to the missiles themselves seem pretty minor, at most a few extra radio links to talk to standard fire control and to other 23Es. The potential code changes would be the biggest part.

That's possible. I have included the text from their first use at Lovet; there is no mention of networking between control missiles and the FTL communication is specifically mentioned as short-ranged. From chapter 57 of At All Costs:

It was called "Apollo," after the archer of the gods.
It hadn't been easy for the R&D types to perfect. Even for Manticoran technology, designing the components had required previously impossible levels of miniaturization, and BuWeaps had encountered more difficulties than anticipated in putting the system into production. This was its first test in actual combat, and the crews which had launched the MDMs watched with bated breath to see how well it performed.
Javier Giscard was wrong. There weren't twelve missiles in an Apollo pod; there were nine. Eight relatively standard attack missiles or EW platforms, and the Apollo missile—much larger than the others, and equipped with a down-sized, short-ranged two-way FTL communications link developed from the one deployed in the still larger Ghost Rider reconnaissance drones. It was a remote control node, following along behind the other eight missiles from the same pod, without any warhead or electronic warfare capability of its own.
The impeller wedges of the other missiles hid it and its pulsed transmissions from the sensors of Giscard's ships, and from his counter-missiles. But its position allowed it to monitor the standard telemetry links from the other missiles of its pod. And it also carried a far more capable AI than any standard attack missile—one capable of processing the data from all of the other missiles' tracking and homing systems and sending the result back to its mothership via grav-pulse.
The ships which had launched them had deployed the equally new Keyhole II platforms, equipped not with standard light-speed links for their offensive missiles, but with grav-pulse links. Virtually every Manticoran or Grayson ship which could currently deploy Keyhole II was in Eighth Fleet's order of battle, and Honor Alexander-Harrington had taken ruthless advantage of the capability when she formulated her attack plans.
The grav-pulse transmissions were faster than light, although they weren't instantaneous. Actual transmission speed was "only" about sixty-four times the speed of light, but that was enormously better than anyone had ever been able to do before. The updated sensor information from the on-rushing missiles crossed the distance to the tactical sections and massively capable computers of the superdreadnoughts which had launched them, and at this range, the transmission lag was less than three seconds. For all practical purposes, they might as well have made the trip instantaneously. As did the corrections those tactical sections sent back.
In effect, Apollo gave the Royal Manticoran Navy effectively real-time correction ability at any attainable powered missile range.