Apollo Counter.

SharkHunter wrote:...Prior to that the 23-E has likely used it's AI to slave it's set of missiles to one of those "up close and personal" RD's uptake in case the control missile loses linkage....

One minor problem: drones can't talk to missiles; they don't carry missile control links and don't carry enough other comm channels to deal more than two or three simultaneous communications tasks.

Weird Harold wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:...Prior to that the 23-E has likely used it's AI to slave it's set of missiles to one of those "up close and personal" RD's uptake in case the control missile loses linkage....

One minor problem: drones can't talk to missiles; they don't carry missile control links and don't carry enough other comm channels to deal more than two or three simultaneous communications tasks.

The drones aren't acting as controllers, they're more like laser designator(s) for smart bombs today. There's no intel in the designator itself, but the bombs still guide in on it.

Using the drones is presumably a slightly higher tech version of something like "Missiles tasked AX 1, 12-20, go find whatever ship drone AX 1 is tracking. Blow the hell out of it."

I think there is one partial counter to Apollo that is relatively easy for the League to develop. FTL Comm jamming.

While the League cannot make directional FTL comm signals with any useful bandwidth, they do know how to make the raw signal. It should be fairly straightforward to create FTL comm noise, and turn it into a jamming signal.

This will only partially degrade the effectiveness of Apollo. But it would, for instance, eliminate cross-chatter between Apollo command missiles, and force the command missile to fall back on internal AI routines rather than utilizing the full target picture from all ships and missiles. By itself it probably isn't enough, but it is a very large step.

And in the meantime, (the last few years), Manticore hasn't been working on making the FTL controllers smaller and smarter to the point that every missle has some fallback mechanism available to it?

SWM wrote:I think there is one partial counter to Apollo that is relatively easy for the League to develop. FTL Comm jamming.

While the League cannot make directional FTL comm signals with any useful bandwidth, they do know how to make the raw signal. It should be fairly straightforward to create FTL comm noise, and turn it into a jamming signal.

This will only partially degrade the effectiveness of Apollo. But it would, for instance, eliminate cross-chatter between Apollo command missiles, and force the command missile to fall back on internal AI routines rather than utilizing the full target picture from all ships and missiles. By itself it probably isn't enough, but it is a very large step.

Doubtful. It's stated that the Apollo missile's detection is obscured by the 8 missiles in front of it, so the com path back to the ship would be presumably be similarly free of jamming precise enough to block it.

I never figured this out until I asked myself this: "given that a wedge is shaped like an open V, how does wedge interference obscure ships or missiles behind it?" We think of these things as "head to head" like a dogfight or calvary charge, but rereading quite a few books, the result has been an increased realization that "all missile attacks and fleet maneuvers have an aspect of obliqueness and/or rotation to them, until the last moments".

The other problem is that if you're putting out all that FTL noise, that gives the RMN an unspoofable way of determining where your ships are, and just following that FTL signal on in to the ship, resulting in a single volley KABOOM.

SharkHunter wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:One minor problem: drones can't talk to missiles; they don't carry missile control links and don't carry enough other comm channels to deal more than two or three simultaneous communications tasks.

The drones aren't acting as controllers, they're more like laser designator(s) for smart bombs today. There's no intel in the designator itself, but the bombs still guide in on it.

Using the drones is presumably a slightly higher tech version of something like "Missiles tasked AX 1, 12-20, go find whatever ship drone AX 1 is tracking. Blow the hell out of it."

But the designator is sending out a laser that the bombs look for.

RDs and shipkillers are closer to a drone spotting for a JDAM dropped from a manned fighter; because there's no direct communication between them - nor does the RD emit anything for the shipkillers to target.

With GPS guided bombs the drone sees the target and (doing some math) turns it's own GPS coordinate into a GPS coordinate for the target. That's data linked back to the drone's base station, which radios the target coordinates to the fighter, which programs it into the GPS guided JDAM. Drop and *boom*

Sure the end result is somebody put eyes on the target and a little later a smartbomb blew it away. But the communication path and information provided is totally different.

SharkHunter wrote: The drones aren't acting as controllers, they're more like laser designator(s) for smart bombs today. There's no intel in the designator itself, but the bombs still guide in on it.

Doesn't matter what you call it, the drones only talk to other drones and their controllers. There is no textev at all that a drone can affect any missile directly.

Jonathan_S pretty much nailed it as far as describing the dynamics.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that Apollo was used against Filereta. The range was close enough that it wasn't needed. In addition, one of the ideas brought up by Prichard was "to save those God aweful missiles for use against a more worthy target" by letting in Theisman's fleet to help.

There is some counter textev. In her conversation with Filereta, Honor mentions the ftl link.

So I'm not sure. Does anyone else have an impression?

Don

Weird Harold wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:...Prior to that the 23-E has likely used it's AI to slave it's set of missiles to one of those "up close and personal" RD's uptake in case the control missile loses linkage....

One minor problem: drones can't talk to missiles; they don't carry missile control links and don't carry enough other comm channels to deal more than two or three simultaneous communications tasks.

Hi Harold,

You are right. But it probably wouldn't be hard to design drones with those capabilities if it turned out to be a worthwhile thing to do.

Don

Weird Harold wrote:

SharkHunter wrote: The drones aren't acting as controllers, they're more like laser designator(s) for smart bombs today. There's no intel in the designator itself, but the bombs still guide in on it.

Doesn't matter what you call it, the drones only talk to other drones and their controllers. There is no textev at all that a drone can affect any missile directly.

Jonathan_S pretty much nailed it as far as describing the dynamics.

Meanwhile... (if not already in the design, and it's not pure textev below) I think you're missing a point: The attack missiles listen to broadcasts from an Apollo missile to get their targeting and ECM information on "light speed channel X", and the drones can transmit on both lights speed and FTL channels. Here's my "almost" textev, realized by a very junior SLN officer:

Shadow of Fredom wrote:“I am Lieutenant Atalante Montella, Royal Manticoran Navy,” she said. “Am I addressing the commanding officer of SLNS Oceanus?”...

He sat back to wait out the two hundred-second lightspeed delay, but—

“Please stand by for Commodore Terekhov,” she said, less than two seconds later. He twitched, his eyes flaring wide open. That was impossible! They were still more than thirty million kilometers away! Nobody could—

"Oh, shit", a little voice said almost calmly deep down inside. "They do have FTL com capability! And if they’ve got recon platforms that close, platforms that can send back targeting data faster-than-light…"

Given that an attack missile locks to "light speed channel x", how hard is it to lock that same frequency to the drone that is transmitting targeting info back to the mother ship, designed to take over ONLY if the Apollo missile control fails? The result would be that the "designator" is automatically and already in place for THAT missile whether it was last updated by an FTL-updated AI command, or with just targeting info using the same light speed link from a close in drone in "non-Apollo fallback mode".