Tiny Attack Craft? [weird idea]

@acceleration:
There were assault shuttles and pinnaces that could manage 600+ gravities in the RMN as of At All Costs, which means latest generation compensators have been miniaturized. Something at the proposed size could probably match LAC acceleration if manned, several thousand gs if unmanned.

@power budget:
Any reason fission reactors wouldn't scale? Grayson used fission in small craft pre-Manticore, and their LACs were far smaller than the Shrike, let alone their small craft.

@cost:
It shares many of its components with the Shrikes, except it has fewer of them. The hull and nodes are the major difference, and those can be mass-produced fairly cheaply, seeing as it's done with both missiles and LACs themselves.




@role:

1) I'm envisioning those things being carryable by any ship type. A Roland for example could easily carry six of them with only minor modifications and use them for a variety of missions. Stronger sensors than pinnaces and integrated FTL means they can do system patrols better. Their PDLC being able to target a dodging missile moving at 0.7 c and 100.000 gravities at 150.000 kilometers means it could easily target mouse-sized targets from medium orbit and given its rapid-fire and no need for ammo, it could take out ground targets a lot better than any shuttle without the destruction caused by a KEW. Plus it is sufficiently protected not to have any worries from many weapons that could down an assault shuttle or pinnace. And in case of full space battle, all six of them would considerably improve a Roland's active defensive ability by around 30%. Larger ships could carry proportionately larger loads, of course.

2) When unmanned, they can move around the system much faster than fleets and can stay in standby for prolonged periods. They are also as easy to deploy as pods. So they could be used to significantly bolster the defenses of a system, station or ship. A freighterload of them is about 2.000. That's 10 Invictuses' worth of CM tubes and point-defense so you could rapidly bolster a remote system or light picket against attack by raiders or even a whole enemy squadron for a short time.

Belial666 wrote:@power budget:
Any reason fission reactors wouldn't scale? Grayson used fission in small craft pre-Manticore, and their LACs were far smaller than the Shrike, let alone their small craft.

Yes, there is a reason they wouldn't scale--David said they couldn't. No, Grayson did not use fission in their small craft. They used fission in their orbital stations--quite a bit larger than LACs.

Belial666 wrote:@acceleration:
There were assault shuttles and pinnaces that could manage 600+ gravities in the RMN as of At All Costs, which means latest generation compensators have been miniaturized. Something at the proposed size could probably match LAC acceleration if manned, several thousand gs if unmanned.

Ah, I hadn't known the small craft had been upgraded that way. That should resolve the acceleration issue - but by that same token, it means that this is now competing with existing pinnaces and assault shuttles for what pinnaces and assault shuttles are doing adequately. They're not a presence in ship-to-ship combat (absent freak circumstances or freighter targets), so this has that going for it. But it's now essentially going for a niche as something to replace those small craft for their roles and sorta nudge the LAC at the lighter end of its work.

@power budget:
Any reason fission reactors wouldn't scale? Grayson used fission in small craft pre-Manticore, and their LACs were far smaller than the Shrike, let alone their small craft.

A recent post recalled a conversation Tourville had with his commissioner about the rumors of Manticoran "super-LAC's" before Buttercup. It did suggest issues with scaling fusion reactors at least: neither the small reactors of small craft nor the larger reactors of starships did not suggest the possibility of an intermediate-sized one sufficient for both the power and size requirements of the rumored LAC's. That's what I've got for not being totally confident that this would work as a default value not calling for some support. And the LAC's manage what they do by running off capacitors for everything but the wedge, so here, you'd have to suppose the capacitors scale as well.

@cost:
It shares many of its components with the Shrikes, except it has fewer of them. The hull and nodes are the major difference, and those can be mass-produced fairly cheaply, seeing as it's done with both missiles and LACs themselves.

I imagine pinnace nodes would be at least as relevant there. Still - there's nothing of around this size being used by navies at least. You have to go up or down by a factor of 8-10 to hit pinnaces on one side or LAC's/courier boats on the other. So specific parts for this are going to be, often enough, built just for it, even assuming that it's not relying on anything all that remarkable for miniaturization etc. It's enough that I'd still rate cost as a very good open question.

@role:

1) I'm envisioning those things being carryable by any ship type. A Roland for example could easily carry six of them with only minor modifications and use them for a variety of missions. Stronger sensors than pinnaces and integrated FTL means they can do system patrols better. Their PDLC being able to target a dodging missile moving at 0.7 c and 100.000 gravities at 150.000 kilometers means it could easily target mouse-sized targets from medium orbit and given its rapid-fire and no need for ammo, it could take out ground targets a lot better than any shuttle without the destruction caused by a KEW. Plus it is sufficiently protected not to have any worries from many weapons that could down an assault shuttle or pinnace. And in case of full space battle, all six of them would considerably improve a Roland's active defensive ability by around 30%. Larger ships could carry proportionately larger loads, of course.

They are carrying them where? Ten times pinnace sized and differently shaped - destroyers already don't carry any pinnaces, so the boat bay that would take this without serious modification would be in the wall. With doable modification - at the cost of operating pinnaces or cutters, quite possibly - figure large cruisers and battlecruisers.

If it's riding the outside, it's covering sensors or weapons and it's not easily serviced.

So, I think you're being far too optimistic on that count.

A destroyer isn't going to need a parasite to do system patrols normally. That's its job. Otherwise, it uses far faster, far stealthier recon drones. They won't have the same loiter time (probably - maybe), but that is rarely an issue, and you can handle it just by letting the drones coast without the wedge and be even stealthier.

Point defense lasers being put to ground attack use again brings up where the ship is for this. Being able to survive a good bit of what will kill a pinnace or assault shuttle is great, but when it's likely to cost vastly more than one or ten of them anyway, well, that's not an overwhelming selling point.

2) When unmanned, they can move around the system much faster than fleets and can stay in standby for prolonged periods. They are also as easy to deploy as pods. So they could be used to significantly bolster the defenses of a system, station or ship. A freighterload of them is about 2.000. That's 10 Invictuses' worth of CM tubes and point-defense so you could rapidly bolster a remote system or light picket against attack by raiders or even a whole enemy squadron for a short time.

The point defense role is far and away the best selling point - enough so that I think it'd do a lot better being built for nothing but that and recon work, and preferably being built down to where it can fit in more boat bays, or have tractor systems to keep itself somewhere not too inconvenient on the hull.

Building it to take or leave a crew will increase expense and complicate the machinery. With a crew, it'll have autonomous control systems doing no work and systems otherwise built secure enough to withstand lots of uncompensated accel; without one, it will have a lot of wasted life support and crew access, work, and living space.

For defense bolstering, for the cost and for the freighter space (though I can't believe that would be the limiting factor often), the system will get a lot more work out of missile pods. Dead enemies no longer need defense against, after all.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Trying to figure out where this ship would fit, mission wise between our known tiny atmosphere capable craft (pinnaces, assault shuttles), etc. that are also big enough to popgun a freighter, and the available LACs which can do several things REALLY REALLY well, both independently and as fleet operational units.

Then "back of the envelope" calculate the crewing/ capability/ mass and size requirements for the Tiny LAC. That said, I haven't figured out a below the LAC capability that isn't a kamikaze mission in space, aka toast against even a Saganami era DD much less anything else that is newer.

But let's say, 3 crew (rest is automated), no atmospheric capability, fits against a "mission module" that could do one of the roles adequately for a short period of time, not uber quick, say a "PT Boat in Space" role. Doable at what size? How launched and recovered, etc.

I think Belial intended this craft to be unmanned (not counting external modules).

I don't. TRwo of the roles he listed in the original post were Manned System Patrol and Junction/station police. I suppose for the later you could be using Robocop, but that appears to be cross-universe.

About the power, how large is that Shrike fission plant exactly? Or an improved version of the fission plant in the Faith-class LAC, which was less than half the Shrike's mass? 10% of the Faith-class LAC, not including capacitors? Smaller?


Because if it's small enough to fit, we might as well have an overpowered tiny LAC with 25-30% of its mass (700-800 tons) being the reactor that doesn't rely on capacitors, rather than using fusion power, which is probably insufficient.

Belial666 wrote:About the power, how large is that Shrike fission plant exactly? Or an improved version of the fission plant in the Faith-class LAC, which was less than half the Shrike's mass? 10% of the Faith-class LAC, not including capacitors? Smaller?


Because if it's small enough to fit, we might as well have an overpowered tiny LAC with 25-30% of its mass (700-800 tons) being the reactor that doesn't rely on capacitors, rather than using fusion power, which is probably insufficient.

The LACs with fission reactors most certainly do rely on capacitors. In AoV, when they are discussing how to power the rear sidewall, there is a discussion of running power lines to both the forward and aft capacitor rings, and using which ever one wasn't needed at the time.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

SWM wrote:I think Belial intended this craft to be unmanned (not counting external modules).

I don't. TRwo of the roles he listed in the original post were Manned System Patrol and Junction/station police. I suppose for the later you could be using Robocop, but that appears to be cross-universe.

For the manned roles, I imagine he meant using the external manned module that he described. No, I don't know how he thinks that would work.

@manned/unmanned role:

1) Small craft can be remotely controlled; we've seen it done even with jury-rigged lightspeed links. With a purpose-built FTL link, there's no reason it couldn't be done, at least for the less decision-critical roles.

2) For more demanding roles, I'm imagining a two-man crew or even a single pilot. They'll be there to make the decisions that can't be done through remote control - any crew-demanding but relatively slower tasks could still be done remotely. Think F1 cars and pilot vs engineer oversight; the pilot is there for the split-second reactions and driving skills, while the engineers are back in the team base, working the engine and all other components with far better support and without having to risk themselves or take up mass.

3) If needed, multiple such craft could be slaved together, with one control crew running all of them, sort of how the Apollo missile clusters up with multiple other missiles.




The craft changes from "manned" to "unmanned" by the crew simply not being onboard and the compensator disabled. It can be then run remotely and stuff. As a safety feature, the onboard physical controls have higher priority than remote functions.

Belial666 wrote:@manned/unmanned role:

1) Small craft can be remotely controlled; we've seen it done even with jury-rigged lightspeed links. With a purpose-built FTL link, there's no reason it couldn't be done, at least for the less decision-critical roles.

2) For more demanding roles, I'm imagining a two-man crew or even a single pilot. They'll be there to make the decisions that can't be done through remote control - any crew-demanding but relatively slower tasks could still be done remotely. Think F1 cars and pilot vs engineer oversight; the pilot is there for the split-second reactions and driving skills, while the engineers are back in the team base, working the engine and all other components with far better support and without having to risk themselves or take up mass.

3) If needed, multiple such craft could be slaved together, with one control crew running all of them, sort of how the Apollo missile clusters up with multiple other missiles.




The craft changes from "manned" to "unmanned" by the crew simply not being onboard and the compensator disabled. It can be then run remotely and stuff. As a safety feature, the onboard physical controls have higher priority than remote functions.

Except that frequently the on board pilots are going to have to run the engines, as that is what is required in a combat situation, and if you are dealing with seconds delays for engine changes, that could be fatal. So now you have to add a flight engineer, and possibly an assistant, and the crew is up to 4 - which have to be provided life support, and living space, and you are rapidly approaching a LAC in terms of complexity. So just use a LAC.