Question about Beowulf tactics

I had been doing more thinking about my idea of ships that could do several rapid sequential micro jumps and I ran into trouble with the concept of using energy weapons in there attack.

I remembered an explanation of the physics of a hyper translation back to normal space that was given in the story of the MA sneaking into the Manticore system for the Yawata(?) strike. It seems that the MA ships were able to leave a very small hyper footprint because they had very little "speed" when they translated to normal space. If the ships had been traveling at a "normal" speed when they translated into normal space a lot of that speed is bleed off in translation and that energy is expended in the form of a larger hyper footprint. The whole point being that with each translation my multi-micro-jumping ship would loose speed. So if I were to attempt to jump in to the middle of a fleet of ships that had been accelerating for a period of time, the whole fleet would fly by me as I was translating to normal space. trying to target energy weapons onto ships with such a velocity differential would be impossible.

But that gave rise to a different idea. Just how small could a sort range single use hyper generator be made? Could such a thing be fit into a missile? If so, then I could have a ship in the path of an oncoming enemy fleet launch such a missile that would translate back to normal space precisely in front of an oncoming ship. The velocity of the impact would mostly be determined by the speed of the enemy ship, but if the "missile" was directly in front of the enemy ship, it should go right down the throat of the enemy ship's wedge, instantaneously destroying the whole ship.

However, after having thought on it, I then decided that I hoped such a missile could never be made. Such a weapon would more or less be a deep space version of a weapon of mass destruction. I would just prefer to stay away from such a thing.

But I still think ships with multi-micro-jumping capability could be useful even with using only missiles as weapons. If I had a squadron of 6 BC's that could jump to 3 points in the rear of an attacking fleet and launch a couple hundred or so missiles from each point in concert with having the main fleet launching hundreds more missiles into the enemy fleet's front, it could make life for that enemy fleet very difficult. And thanks to apollo the squadron doing the jumping wouldn't have to be the ship controlling the missiles it launched. Those missiles could be controlled by resources back in the main fleet for a devastating combined effect.

Weird Harold wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:They did declare war before Pearl Harbor, they just didn't inform the US until after the bombs fell.

They also intended to formally declare war, but there was a delay in decrypting the declaration so it was delivered late.

Zakharra wrote: I read somewhere (I wish I had bookmarked the page) that the Japanese never intended to deliver the declaration of war before the attack. To do so would have given the US warning of it. The US did have telegraph and telephones (I believe) contact, so it would have taken only a call to warn the US Naval command there of a possible attack.

I'm wondering if it is technically possible that you are correct in that Japan never intended to declare war before the attack. I don't think that the letter the Japanese Ambassador delivered was a declaration of war, it may have only brought an official end to peace negotiations. So the problem may be more precisely defined as that Japan attacked before negotiations were officially broken, not that the U.S. hadn't been advised of a state of war.

I had thought that there was something in the Pearls specifically saying that hyper generators will not fit on a missile, but I guess not. The Pearls do state that hyper generators are very large; the size of a courier boat is primarily due to the size of the alpha nodes and the hyper generator. At a wild guess, the smallest a hyper missile could be is the size of a LAC; your opinion may vary.

As for the microjumping capability, you are hypothesizing new tech. It is impossible to properly discuss new tech because (by definition) we have no text evidence by which to judge whether it is possible. All you can do is hand-wave. It is not a productive conversation.

StealthSeeker wrote:
I believe that your timing here is correct but regardless of the "mistake" by the Japanese ambassador the things that really burn me are the ones that the U.S. made. At that time the U.S. had broken the Japanese code and our military knew the contents of the Japanese letter long before the Japanese ambassador did. But our military only made a halfhearted attempt to get a warning to Hawaii about the time deadline given in the letter. The warning did finally arrive in Hawaii but not until hours after the attack was over.

Had the warning arrived on time, the sighting of the Japanese sub outside Perl Harbor nor the sighting by radar of the incoming Japanese airplanes would have been dismissed as they were. Had the warning arrived in Hawaii as it should have, the Japanese would have arrived and found themselves in a world of hurt. A great number of our planes would have been in the air to greet them.

The U.S. had behaved a great deal like the SLN in our story here.

Japan Ambassador line was not using Japan's new naval codes and never did. JN25 codes were in place before the attack on pearl harbor. These codes were not broken until 1942 before battle of Midway and even then a very specific "leaked" message had to be "given" to the Japanesse to verify their code breaking scheme.

No one would have had any idea Hawaii was about to be attacked. You could state that there might have been a couple PBY patrols if someone equated breaking off diplomatic ties with open war. Of course the note was not broken until 1pm Eastern or 7am Hawaii time. Bombers were over Pearl Harbor at 7:48am. So, the patrol craft even if someone made a split second decision, aircrews were roused out of bed on a Sunday PEACETIME morning, PBY is fueled, warmed up, and takes to the air, I would betcha the japanese bombers and fighter would have already blown away said aircraft on the runway or at best 10miles from the runway. Hmm I guess at that time the PBY did not have landing gear, so guess it would have been untie the plane from the docks and taxi to open water first. Hmm was it 41 or 42 when landing gear was added? In either case...

One bit that I have looked up is that Sigma Draconis (Beowulf's parent star) is a G9, which according to the Wikia would have a hyper limit around 18LM, or 324MM KM orbital radius. The "wikipedia" sizing and luminosity of that star is that it's stellar mass is about 77% of Sol, with something like a 43% luminosity, so likely it's not a hot star, meaning that I'd presume that Beowulf itself is rather closer in than Earth (8 LM, 144MM KM orbita radius) but perhaps at an equivalent distance from the hyper limit. Current telescopes have perhaps one Uranus size planet out system which would have it's own hyper limit to factor in "sometime" but likely not in the Mandarin's desired "attack time frame".

If my assumptions are correct, what that gives the Beowulf SDF however, is profound, as their interior position gives them alot more freedom of maneuver in terms of shorter distances to get in position to stop an invasion fleet. It also reduces the time required to get FTL drones on station at the beginning of an SLN attack event.

Keep in mind that as the SLN is heading in, the RMN isn't going to be sitting quietly on the sidelines waiting for the call. They're going to be using Hermes buoys, etc. to freak out the Sollie command officers, and tell them to to "state their intentions" and have ships headed in the right direction at a moments notice, full speed ahead, as that also puts the RMN SD(p)s in better position to "defend the terminus" and in the process put put any SLN formation in an "about to be defeated in detail" mousetrap. That being the case, Holman Sanders can simply invite the RMN for joint exercises any time Beowulf wants to because they don't give a flying (expletive) about what the Mandarin's think any more.

If any such attack begins, "pre-Mycroft", I wonder if there's a Moriarty + RMN "limpeted and towed pods" solution that could be brought in early can be totally operated and manned by the BSDF, (36 SD's x 90 pods x 14 Mk16-G missiles is still a helluva first launch) coordinating with whatever SDF missiles of their own that would already be in play, even without bringing further Mark 25's or intervention in from Manticore.

You should be aware that there is a discrepancy in the information about Beowulf. You are correct that early text says that Beowulf is in the Sigma Draconis System. However, the text also states that Beowulf is 40 light-years from Sol. The real Sigma Draconis is only 20 light-years from Sol. After the discrepancy was pointed out to David (very early on), he stopped mentioning Sigma Draconis. While he has not explicitly retconned the early text connecting Beowulf with the name Sigma Draconis, it would be a mistake to assume that Beowulf's star has anything to do with the real world Sigma Draconis. It is in almost the same category as the early textev describing the length of ships before the Great Resizing.

That said, it is true that most habitable planets are well inside the hyper-limit of stars in the Honorverse. Cases like Gryphon and Sphinx are unusual.

I would assume that the BSDF has already transferred its military assets from the area around the terminus to orbit around Beowulf. Given that their SDF and terminus defences were originally of a bigger quantity due to the perception of defending against a Havenite attack (read that somewhere, can't remember where at the moment), that alone should bolster their chances od successfully defeating the SLN taskforce when it comes calling.

--snipping--

SWM wrote:You should be aware that there is a discrepancy in the information about Beowulf. You are correct that early text says that Beowulf is in the Sigma Draconis System. However, the text also states that Beowulf is 40 light-years from Sol. The real Sigma Draconis is only 20 light-years from Sol. After the discrepancy was pointed out to David (very early on), he stopped mentioning Sigma Draconis. While he has not explicitly retconned the early text connecting Beowulf with the name Sigma Draconis, it would be a mistake to assume that Beowulf's star has anything to do with the real world Sigma Draconis. It is in almost the same category as the early textev describing the length of ships before the Great Resizing.

I did not know that!

Relax wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:
I believe that your timing here is correct but regardless of the "mistake" by the Japanese ambassador the things that really burn me are the ones that the U.S. made. At that time the U.S. had broken the Japanese code and our military knew the contents of the Japanese letter long before the Japanese ambassador did. But our military only made a halfhearted attempt to get a warning to Hawaii about the time deadline given in the letter. The warning did finally arrive in Hawaii but not until hours after the attack was over.

Had the warning arrived on time, the sighting of the Japanese sub outside Perl Harbor nor the sighting by radar of the incoming Japanese airplanes would have been dismissed as they were. Had the warning arrived in Hawaii as it should have, the Japanese would have arrived and found themselves in a world of hurt. A great number of our planes would have been in the air to greet them.

The U.S. had behaved a great deal like the SLN in our story here.

Japan Ambassador line was not using Japan's new naval codes and never did. JN25 codes were in place before the attack on pearl harbor. These codes were not broken until 1942 before battle of Midway and even then a very specific "leaked" message had to be "given" to the Japanesse to verify their code breaking scheme.

No one would have had any idea Hawaii was about to be attacked. You could state that there might have been a couple PBY patrols if someone equated breaking off diplomatic ties with open war. Of course the note was not broken until 1pm Eastern or 7am Hawaii time. Bombers were over Pearl Harbor at 7:48am. So, the patrol craft even if someone made a split second decision, aircrews were roused out of bed on a Sunday PEACETIME morning, PBY is fueled, warmed up, and takes to the air, I would betcha the japanese bombers and fighter would have already blown away said aircraft on the runway or at best 10miles from the runway. Hmm I guess at that time the PBY did not have landing gear, so guess it would have been untie the plane from the docks and taxi to open water first. Hmm was it 41 or 42 when landing gear was added? In either case...

From what I can find the Japanese Ambassador was getting his information sent to him via a code machine called "type 97" and which the U.S. cryptographers call "purple" and this code was broken by the U.S. and we did know the contents of the last part of the Japanese communication well before the Japanese Ambassador did. The U.S. simply and completely failed to successfully use the information we had.

SWM wrote:I had thought that there was something in the Pearls specifically saying that hyper generators will not fit on a missile, but I guess not. The Pearls do state that hyper generators are very large; the size of a courier boat is primarily due to the size of the alpha nodes and the hyper generator. At a wild guess, the smallest a hyper missile could be is the size of a LAC; your opinion may vary.

As for the microjumping capability, you are hypothesizing new tech. It is impossible to properly discuss new tech because (by definition) we have no text evidence by which to judge whether it is possible. All you can do is hand-wave. It is not a productive conversation.

Ahhh yes, maybe it is useless and unproductive, but imagining something new and different is a great deal of fun. As proof, I give you this whole series of Honorverse books. (and many others)