Brigade XO wrote:Then there is the question of where Hasta came from as it was the most newly tested & deployed of the missile attack systems. Is there enough background and design (and demonstrator) examples to show where it was developed?
Thank you, I was trying to remember the codename for the weapon.
I had the impression that the Hasta was an entirely SLN/TIY development, probably done entirely at the Naval Station Ganymede. And this is what worried me: the SLN finally innovating, without the Alignment to push it. They have the population and the industry to do it if they set their sights on it.
I have to wonder if Manticore or perhaps Beowulf has any people planted in Technodyne (at any level) to provide at least some information about what they are developing or what is in production or volumes of ships and their types have been being built for their many customers. It's the development and rapid start up of production on things that would interest any body. That being competitors, clients, other interested parties.
Technodyne as part of quality control and oversight for all those billions of credits being spent and as liaison between SLN and the various design/production teams. That doesn't begin to cover what industrial spying the SLN and competitors might attempt.
Clearly any SLN agents (overt or covert) either missed all those BCs going to Monica and such little things as the Cataphract as a project. Certainly that could be explained by either Technodyne's own internal security and the deeply covert Alignment agents planted to keep an eye on what was going on.
That's a good question. I would suspect the answer is "most definitely yes" though whether it's at the level of industrial espionage or simple keeping tabs is up for discussion. One T-century ago, the RMN was a capable Navy but didn't rise to Tier One status. They had 16 then-250-year-old battleships, 11 150-year-old dreadnoughts and just 3 superdreadoughts (you may argue that DN+SD does make it two battle squadrons and thus they were Tier One). They probably were
customers of TIY and therefore probably had a good commercial relationship with them. They were also of course rivals, since the Manticoran yards did build BCs (possibly even 200 of them at the time) and produced destroyers like they grew in trees.
By the time Project Gram started, they knew they had to know a lot about development. We know from
House of Steel that they were completely aware of developments, even in theory, in all parts of the Galaxy. TIY, as the Galaxy's premier weapons builder, probably had their full attention. Again, whether they had infiltrated agents inside or whether they were simply buying experimental tech (so they kept getting calls from sales reps), is up for discussion. I would suppose it's "all of the above."
And that turns to your question: would agents have noticed the BCs pawned off to Monica? I suspect not. Corruption was endemic in the SLN and TIY, as a big contractor, would not be alien to that. The OFS and the FF did routinely supply their warlords with off-the-book ships, when they weren't the pirates themselves. So this was known to happen, including supplying personnel to help the transition. I suspect that BCs were rare, though, and especially two full squadrons worth of last-generation (as opposed to obsolete) classes. But as an arms supplier independent of the League, they could have had legitimate reasons to sell to Monica and the technicians sent there wouldn't have known who paid for the ships.
After all, petty regimes spending more money in their military instead of helping educate their population and providing healthcare are commonplace.
We also know the Alignment had agents inside Technodyne. So they probably inserted and backdated research documents that "proved" that the Cataphract was their invention all along. Middle- and top management in Technodyne would have latched on to that to save face, for not having had the wherewithal to keep tabs on what the Manties had developed a decade before.