Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

Thanks for correcting that. I meant to say B-52 bomber escorts. I've got B-2 on the brain after watching a documentary. I wanted to know why they were called flying wings. No, they don't have escorts because of the stealth. And when we bombed the bunker in Iran they sent off two from their airbase in opposite directions as a misdirection.

But, because of their stealth, if they did have escorts it would be like escorting the LDs.

Anyway, why would it matter if the MAN's FTL platforms would be detected, as long as they can't be localized, like GR?

Knowing FTL platforms are operating in the system and localizing them, as well as the spiders they are communicating with is two very different balls of wax.

Other than a surprise attack, so after the battle has commenced.

penny wrote:Thanks for correcting that. I meant to say B-52 bomber escorts. I've got B-2 on the brain after watching a documentary. I wanted to know why they were called flying wings. No, they don't have escorts because of the stealth. And when we bombed the bunker in Iran they sent off two from their airbase in opposite directions as a misdirection.

But, because of their stealth, if they did have escorts it would be like escorting the LDs.

Anyway, why would it matter if the MAN's FTL platforms would be detected, as long as they can't be localized, like GR?

Knowing FTL platforms are operating in the system and localizing them, as well as the spiders they are communicating with is two very different balls of wax.

Other than a surprise attack, so after the battle has commenced.

Actually, the B-2 s had a close escort of F-35s into and through Iran during the recent Bombing mission, with a vanguard and overwatch of F-22s penetrating and flying top cover in the event the Iranians got a jet in the area. The F-35s were using their superior tactical sensors (and jammers) as a second layer of defense to actively negate defenses in case stealth didn't work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/us/politics/b2-pilots-iran.html

The B-21s will have this capability (and the ability to fire air to air missiles) built in.

Back to the Honorverse - if FTL coms are detected, surprise is lost. Every ship will shortly be at action stations with active wedges and defenses - space stations will take "evasive maneuvers" and raise their defenses. Yeah, you don't know where they are or what they are saying, but you know "someone" you don't know is talking.

When I used to play paintball, I was later told by my opfor "friends" that they would listen for my deep bass rumble - even when I whisper, I tend to dump alot of energy at the bottom of the vocal range, they could hear the long waves from a few hundred feet out through the trees and brush - usually well before they could see me. They couldn't hear what I was saying, but they knew I was... there... And just knowing I was nearby changed how they maneuvered.

Theemile wrote:

penny wrote:Thanks for correcting that. I meant to say B-52 bomber escorts. I've got B-2 on the brain after watching a documentary. I wanted to know why they were called flying wings. No, they don't have escorts because of the stealth. And when we bombed the bunker in Iran they sent off two from their airbase in opposite directions as a misdirection.

But, because of their stealth, if they did have escorts it would be like escorting the LDs.

Anyway, why would it matter if the MAN's FTL platforms would be detected, as long as they can't be localized, like GR?

Knowing FTL platforms are operating in the system and localizing them, as well as the spiders they are communicating with is two very different balls of wax.

Other than a surprise attack, so after the battle has commenced.

Actually, the B-2 s had a close escort of F-35s into and through Iran during the recent Bombing mission, with a vanguard and overwatch of F-22s penetrating and flying top cover in the event the Iranians got a jet in the area. The F-35s were using their superior tactical sensors (and jammers) as a second layer of defense to actively negate defenses in case stealth didn't work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/us/politics/b2-pilots-iran.html

The B-21s will have this capability (and the ability to fire air to air missiles) built in.

Back to the Honorverse - if FTL coms are detected, surprise is lost. Every ship will shortly be at action stations with active wedges and defenses - space stations will take "evasive maneuvers" and raise their defenses. Yeah, you don't know where they are or what they are saying, but you know "someone" you don't know is talking.

When I used to play paintball, I was later told by my opfor "friends" that they would listen for my deep bass rumble - even when I whisper, I tend to dump alot of energy at the bottom of the vocal range, they could hear the long waves from a few hundred feet out through the trees and brush - usually well before they could see me. They couldn't hear what I was saying, but they knew I was... there... And just knowing I was nearby changed how they maneuvered.

I was almost certain I heard Trump say that the F-35s had gotten back successfully. Anyway, I still meant to say B-52.

Indeed Theemile. The enemy would know someone is talking and the element of surprise would be gone. That is what I meant by the final statement, "Other than in a surprise attack, but it won't matter after the battle has commenced."

penny wrote:A CM control missile like Apollo

BTW, I think the control links problem can be solved if CMs were designed with a control missile controlling a brood of eight like what happens with Apollo. Heck, a single control missile could control an entire launch since the same fine control that is needed with missiles is unnecessary.

tlb wrote:Actually, if I understand To End in Fire correctly, what is in the design phase at Bolthole is a two stage system, similar to what Galton had. The first stage pushes out a collection of CM missiles which can then fire at the incoming missile swarm at much farther distance out, compared to a regular CM. Knowing the GA mindset, that first stage will probably have a single control link (perhaps FTL) and it then will have light speed control links to its CM's.

Jonathan _S wrote:One thing I've speculated about is that a sensor able to read FTL transmissions should be smaller and simpler than the full-up FTL transceiver built into the Apollo control missile.

And for even extra-extended CM ranges, say out to 6-7 million km, you could probably get away with one-way FTL control.

So if the 2-drive CM or CM booster, or however they do it, has room for an FTL receiver in its tail that'd cut a fair bit of lag out. Yes updates from the CMs would still be trickling back at only the speed of light; as would any radar/lidar returns from the ship's active sensors or anything the ship's passives might pick up from the incoming missiles. But at least once the ship's tac computers updated the intercept info and/or had new updates to help the CM overcome any ECM from the inbound salvo they could squirt that out to them FTL at 62c.


But if that doesn't work then potentially, as I speculated above, the RMN would come up with a free flying drone that a Keyhole was able to talk to via FTL and which acted as a a forward (lightspeed) fire control relay for those extra extended range CMs

Kudos for the GA if Bolthole is indeed working on a CM system like that.

Jonathan, your suggestion is really brilliant! Why does there need to be a two-way FTL communication for the CMs when the entire confrontation happens so close to the mother ships? *

I was meaning to interject and never got around to it. I think it was with the advent of Apollo when a missile launch received enough "common sense" to go into autonomous mode. If control links are a problem, why can't a second or third CM launch or "a" launch go into autonomous mode; fed only by a single control missile that is communicating with the mothership? Why should autonomous mode be reserved for a missile launch that is so far down range that it has outranged light speed? It seems autonomous mode should also be able to support a lack of control links.

One argument might be that autonomous mode is practical because missiles should be able to find their huge targets, ships, on their own. But do CMs need the fine-grained control that missiles do? Besides, via the distribution of the feed from a single control missile that is communicating with the ship, fine-grained control should exist.


P.S. Does text spell out the range at which simple light speed communication becomes a problem? I am really shocked to think light speed lag should be a problem at the ranges of CM warfare. Even with the MAN's long legged CMs???

*Page 2 of the thread.

penny wrote:P.S. Does text spell out the range at which simple light speed communication becomes a problem? I am really shocked to think light speed lag should be a problem at the ranges of CM warfare. Even with the MAN's long legged CMs???

The text isn't super specific, though IIRC it does say that with Mk31 CMs (3.5 million km range) the outer half-million tended no to be used because hit percentages went down too much). But in any case there wouldn't be a hard cliff cut-off range, but a gradual decrease in effectiveness as range increased.

But lets break out the dreaded calculator and see what kind of signal delay they'd be dealing with. Here are the maximum one-way light-speed lags for various CMs.
- Standard CM (1.5 million km - 0.18c): 5.0 seconds
- Mk 30 CM (2.2 million km - 0.25c): 7.3 seconds
- Mk 31 MC (3.5 million km - 0.32c): 11.7 seconds
- notional 2-standard CM drive (6.2 million km - 0.36c): 21.0 seconds
- notional 2-Mk31 CM drive (14.3 million km - 0.64c): 47.7 seconds

Even taking the current (single-drive) Mk31 if you sent a signal 11 seconds before burnout the missile would cover about 0.9 million km while the lightspeed signal traveled from ship to missile. And while 11 seconds is just 14.6% of its maximum flight time the final 11 seconds represents 37.3% of its maximum flight distance.

Is that too much lag for useful updates? For the Mk31, which only was a fraction of a second left to do anything with that info, almost certainly. But for a notional 2-drive version that has another 75 seconds to react am 11-second lagged update might still be useful; but would a 30 second lagged one be? Dunno. Certainly it'd seem less useful.

penny wrote:I think it was with the advent of Apollo when a missile launch received enough "common sense" to go into autonomous mode. If control links are a problem, why can't a second or third CM launch or "a" launch go into autonomous mode; fed only by a single control missile that is communicating with the mothership? Why should autonomous mode be reserved for a missile launch that is so far down range that it has outranged light speed? It seems autonomous mode should also be able to support a lack of control links.

One argument might be that autonomous mode is practical because missiles should be able to find their huge targets, ships, on their own. But do CMs need the fine-grained control that missiles do? Besides, via the distribution of the feed from a single control missile that is communicating with the ship, fine-grained control should exist.

The problem with autonomous mode pre-Apollo is intelligence and not common sense. Pre-Apollo each missile was on its own, with only its limited sensory suite and attack computer to guide its actions. The Apollo command missile added more sophisticated sensors and a communication network between command missiles to give its more capable attack computer a better view of the battlefield and so a much better direct control of each attacking missile.

Missiles get their commands from the rear, in the direction of the ship that fired them and not the direction of the ship being attacked. So a second volley of counter-missiles could not be controlled by a command missile that was launched with the first volley.

penny wrote:I think it was with the advent of Apollo when a missile launch received enough "common sense" to go into autonomous mode. If control links are a problem, why can't a second or third CM launch or "a" launch go into autonomous mode; fed only by a single control missile that is communicating with the mothership? Why should autonomous mode be reserved for a missile launch that is so far down range that it has outranged light speed? It seems autonomous mode should also be able to support a lack of control links.

One argument might be that autonomous mode is practical because missiles should be able to find their huge targets, ships, on their own. But do CMs need the fine-grained control that missiles do? Besides, via the distribution of the feed from a single control missile that is communicating with the ship, fine-grained control should exist.

tlb wrote:The problem with autonomous mode pre-Apollo is intelligence and not common sense. Pre-Apollo each missile was on its own, with only its limited sensory suite and attack computer to guide its actions. The Apollo command missile added more sophisticated sensors and a communication network between command missiles to give its more capable attack computer a better view of the battlefield and so a much better direct control of each attacking missile.

Sure. I was just being cute and equating "common sense" (which is in quotes) with intelligence; a more capable computer. Common sense and street smarts are their own forms of intelligence, some people say. (Akin to my parents preaching that international travel provides an education not found in textbooks.) Before Apollo, missiles didn't have common sense or book smarts. Book smarts would be the more capable command missile I suppose. But you were right to make it clear.

tlb wrote:Missiles get their commands from the rear, in the direction of the ship that fired them and not the direction of the ship being attacked. So a second volley of counter-missiles could not be controlled by a command missile that was launched with the first volley.

Indeed. But I was not suggesting that the first few launches need to be a part of that. I am assuming there are enough control links for a couple of launches? Only after control links become a problem should an autonomous launch be deployed, whose control missile would be getting updates from the rear err mothership. Control missiles share their feed.

One control missile could lead an entire counter-missile launch in autonomous mode, sharing data with the other control missiles.

tlb wrote:Missiles get their commands from the rear, in the direction of the ship that fired them and not the direction of the ship being attacked. So a second volley of counter-missiles could not be controlled by a command missile that was launched with the first volley.

penny wrote:Indeed. But I was not suggesting that the first few launches need to be a part of that. I am assuming there are enough control links for a couple of launches? Only after control links become a problem should an autonomous launch be deployed, whose control missile would be getting updates from the rear err mothership. Control missiles share their feed.

One control missile could lead an entire counter-missile launch in autonomous mode, sharing data with the other control missiles.

I do not believe that is the proper use of command/control missile. According to the fan-wiki Keyhole was created to give more control links for the counter-missiles, so insufficient CM control links are not a reason for an autonomous launch of counter-missiles.

Missiles are fired, whenever possible, so that they still have powered flight when they reach the target. So a single-drive missile will have a specific time of flight at its fixed acceleration giving a top speed on approach to the target that had been low enough to allow two or three CM launches at the wave of missiles.

But now with multi-drive missiles, they can accelerate three times longer (for the standard missile), giving a top speed at target that is three times higher (ignoring Special Relativity) and cutting the time of response to only one CM launch per wave.

To allow counter-missiles to have the same effect as before, it will be necessary to attack the missile wave much farther out. This is a problem because the counter-missile drive is of limited duration. Two solutions are either a multi-drive counter-missile or a regular CM mounted on a something that can carry it out to the new attack range.

A multi-drive CM will have to be bigger and more expensive, but will not be as responsive because of the increased time delay in the control loop.

If the something that carries the counter-missile, could carry a bundle of them and use FTL communication with the launching ship and network with other carrier missiles, then it could function like a command missile for Apollo.

From At All Costs, chapter 19:

Doctrine and hardware had required major modifications, and the modifying process was an ongoing one. The Mark 31 counter-missiles Honor's ships were firing represented significant improvements even over the Mark 30 counter-missiles her command had used as recently as the Battle of Sidemore, only months before. Their insanely powerful wedges were capable of sustaining accelerations of up to 130,000 gravities for as much as seventy-five seconds, which gave them a powered range from rest of almost 3.6 million kilometers.

Kill numbers at such extreme ranges were problematical, to say the least, and the incoming Havenite missiles were equipped with the very best penetration aids and EW systems Shannon Foraker could build into them. That made them much, much better than anything the People's Navy had possessed during the First Havenite War, but BuShips and BuWeaps hadn't precisely been letting grass grow under their feet, either, Honor thought grimly. Her ships mounted at least three times as many counter-missile launchers as ships of their classes had mounted before the advent of pod-based combat.

Their telemetry and control links had been increased by an even higher factor, and each of her ships had deployed additional Mark 20 electronics platforms at the ends of dedicated tractor beams. Nicknamed "Keyhole" by the Navy, the Mark 20 wasn't a traditional tethered decoy, or even an additional sensor platform or Ghost Rider EW platform. These platforms were placed much further from the ships which had launched them, and they had only one function—to serve as fire control telemetry relays. They extended well beyond the boundaries of their motherships' impeller wedges, like an old-style wet-navy submarine's periscope, and they gave the tactical crews aboard those ships the ability to look "down" past the blinding interference of their own outgoing counter-missiles' wedges.

To a civilian, that might have sounded like a small thing, but the implications were huge. The Keyhole platforms were massive and expensive, but they allowed a ship to control multiple counter-missiles for each dedicated shipboard fire control "slot." And they also allowed counter-missile launches to be much more tightly spaced, which added significant depth to the antimissile engagement envelope.

tlb wrote:I do not believe that is the proper use of command/control missile. According to the fan-wiki Keyhole was created to give more control links for the counter-missiles, so insufficient CM control links are not a reason for an autonomous launch of counter-missiles.

Missiles are fired, whenever possible, so that they still have powered flight when they reach the target. So a single-drive missile will have a specific time of flight at its fixed acceleration giving a top speed on approach to the target that had been low enough to allow two or three CM launches at the wave of missiles.

But now with multi-drive missiles, they can accelerate three times longer (for the standard missile), giving a top speed at target that is three times higher (ignoring Special Relativity) and cutting the time of response to only one CM launch per wave.

To allow counter-missiles to have the same effect as before, it will be necessary to attack the missile wave much farther out. This is a problem because the counter-missile drive is of limited duration. Two solutions are either a multi-drive counter-missile or a regular CM mounted on a something that can carry it out to the new attack range.

A multi-drive CM will have to be bigger and more expensive, but will not be as responsive because of the increased time delay in the control loop.

If the something that carries the counter-missile, could carry a bundle of them and use FTL communication with the launching ship and network with other carrier missiles, then it could function like a command missile for Apollo.

Though the RMN did already start making progress of restoring CM effectiveness against MDMs with their newest single-drive CMs.
The Mk30 gained about 43% acceleration over older CMs (going up to 130,000g), gaining that much range and thus possibly allowing an extra launch against incoming MDMs.
Then the Mk31 took that same acceleration and increased the drive endurance 50% (to 75 seconds) - for a combined 124% extra range; and thus buying even more time to engage incoming MDMs.

So a CM carrier or dual-drive CM aren't the only ways to deepen the CM envelope.

But yeah, the RMN seems to want something to make CM control loops more effective at range and a large CM carrying platform with a FTL link back to the mothership would be one possible way to do that (and wouldn't require further improvements to the CMs themselves)

tlb wrote:I do not believe that is the proper use of command/control missile.

I agree that it is not the proper use. But let's substitute “intended use” in the place of “proper use”. In the same vein that ECM was not intended to spoof enemy missiles. But the GA figured out a new utility for ECM; that it could also spoof enemy missiles. Squeezing all of the utility out of ones hardware is essential, productive, cost effective and instrumental to survival.

tlb wrote:According to the fan-wiki Keyhole was created to give more control links for the counter-missiles, so insufficient CM control links are not a reason for an autonomous launch of counter-missiles.

But it can be. Hence my question, “Why reserve autonomous launches exclusively for its present use?” It could be used to further increase the available control links by freeing up control links. Especially if you consider that the bulk of the conversation in this thread is about thickening the counter-missile zone.

tlb wrote:Missiles are fired, whenever possible, so that they still have powered flight when they reach the target. So a single-drive missile will have a specific time of flight at its fixed acceleration giving a top speed on approach to the target that had been low enough to allow two or three CM launches at the wave of missiles.

But now with multi-drive missiles, they can accelerate three times longer (for the standard missile), giving a top speed at target that is three times higher (ignoring Special Relativity) and cutting the time of response to only one CM launch per wave.

To allow counter-missiles to have the same effect as before, it will be necessary to attack the missile wave much farther out. This is a problem because the counter-missile drive is of limited duration. Two solutions are either a multi-drive counter-missile or a regular CM mounted on a something that can carry it out to the new attack range.

A multi-drive CM will have to be bigger and more expensive, but will not be as responsive because of the increased time delay in the control loop.

If the something that carries the counter-missile, could carry a bundle of them and use FTL communication with the launching ship and network with other carrier missiles, then it could function like a command missile for Apollo.

Attacking the missiles much farther out along with thickening that same countermissile zone will increase the dependency on control links and increase the duration the control links will be needed before they are freed up to be reused for another launch.

Autonomous counter-missile launches can help solve the problem, and the tactic would actually be a more robust solution against an enemy whose stealth is better than your own and who will eat your Keyhole platforms for lunch. Your limited Keyhole platforms.


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