Honorverse ramblings and musings

Duckk wrote:Fleet - Largest organizational formation of a navy. Typically subdivided into Task Forces.

Task Force - An organizational unit with a defined activity or task, and may be temporary/ad hoc for the duration of the activity. May be further subdivided into task groups.

Task Group - If Task Force activities are spread beyond meaningful centralized command and control, a task force can split apart into smaller task groups.

Flotilla - Organizational formation of small warships (in the Honorverse, light cruiser and smaller). Consists of multiple squadrons.

Thanks for the response Duckk, but now you've gone and done it by confusing me even more by throwing in 'squadron'. How could I've forgotten squadron? But is there a tonnage requirement? I remember certain passages of complaints that went something like, "This isn't a task force, it's more like a task group." or was it "Not a fleet but a ... "

Heck, I'm confused. At any rate I was hoping the division (npi) was by number of ships and/or tonnage, total and/or individual?

For instance, what is the minimum ship count to be considered a squadron? Fleet? ...

When people make quips like that (for example, reactivating Eighth Fleet in AAC), they're commenting on how their expected force structure is wildly different from their actual force structure. Eighth Fleet's single squadron of SD(P)s and a couple squadrons of CLACs doesn't really compare to, for example, Third Fleet's ~50 SD(P)s.

It's also important to note that these are organizational and administrative units. There aren't necessarily any requirements to be called a Fleet, Task Force, or Task Group (squadron tends to be pretty well defined, however, Janacek's political shenanigans not withstanding). Designating something a Fleet, for example, is important in that it grants them access to certain provisioning and logistical support, a voice in operational planning, and the like. It isn't solely about what goes into the fleet (or task force, or squadron, or whatever), it's also about what goes on around it. That's why Eighth Fleet is called a Fleet, even though its force structure at the start of AAC was pretty pitiful. In the real world, the USN Tenth Fleet doesn't have a single ship to its name (as far as I know) but it's still called a Fleet in order to provide force for the USN Fleet Cyber Command.

Also, it might be helpful to check out the following infodump:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/59/1

cthia wrote:

Duckk wrote:Fleet - Largest organizational formation of a navy. Typically subdivided into Task Forces.

Task Force - An organizational unit with a defined activity or task, and may be temporary/ad hoc for the duration of the activity. May be further subdivided into task groups.

Task Group - If Task Force activities are spread beyond meaningful centralized command and control, a task force can split apart into smaller task groups.

Flotilla - Organizational formation of small warships (in the Honorverse, light cruiser and smaller). Consists of multiple squadrons.

Thanks for the response Duckk, but now you've gone and done it by confusing me even more by throwing in 'squadron'. How could I've forgotten squadron? But is there a tonnage requirement? I remember certain passages of complaints that went something like, "This isn't a task force, it's more like a task group." or was it "Not a fleet but a ... "

Heck, I'm confused. At any rate I was hoping the division (npi) was by number of ships and/or tonnage, total and/or individual?

For instance, what is the minimum ship count to be considered a squadron? Fleet? ...

Duckk (or other BuNine members) can probably give you a better answer, cthia, but my take is...

A "Fleet" or other formation can be just about any size, depending on the forces available for the task. Mike Henke's Tenth Fleet was activated with nothing larger than a BC, and now has 20 SD's and 20 CLAC's Eighth or Tourville's Fifth) can be much larger. Depends on the mission specs.

Let's borrow Mike's Tenth Fleet, since we've seen her movements in Shadow of Freedom.

She divided it into two Task Forces, 10-1 at Montana and 10-2 at Tillerman. From 10-1 she split off Task Group 10-1-1 (Zavata) and Task Group 10-1-2 (Therkhov) for specific missions and provided forces she believed adequate for their missions. Once Zavata returned, Task Group 10-1-1 was dissolved and mold back into 10-1.

She then left a smaller force at Montana (still Task Force 10-1) and took the rest to reunited with Task Force 10-2 at Tillerman, and then took Tenth Fleet to Meyers (a smaller force remained at Tillerman as Task Force 10-2). From there, Task Force 10-3 was delegated to 'pacify' and patrol the Meyers Sector while Tenth Fleet went on to Mesa.

The Navy folks here will probably jump all over my terminology, but the general idea is that the terms allow for the assignments of different forces for different missions, sized to meet the needs as best determined by the Fleet Commander.

Whether Mike has acted wisely or not is still to be determined. Dividing a relatively small fleet into smaller and mutually unsupporting parts is probably frowned upon at Saganami. She is relying on the ISLN being on the back foot and unable to muster a quick response to their defeats in that sector.

General Robert E.Lee tried something like that in 1862; unfortunately, a copy of his orders were found by the Union forces and he was forced to fight a desperate battle (Antietam) to check the Federals and get his Army back to Virgina.

Presumably it will work out better for Mike.

We shall see...eventually.

ETA: Duckk is the authority on this, so I'dgo with his posting. I'm just an amateur.

ETA: I made it back to Rear Admiral!!!

I'm back! My sister took my niece to Fuerteventura — in the Canaries — to see where she was conceived. The Canaries are beautiful. An understatement. I also attended a double wedding in Romania of some friends, as my niece was asked to be a flower girl. It was all so beautiful and refreshing.

On the trip back we flew from Bucharest to North Carolina. Approximately fifteen hours travel time. We departed around dawn Friday morning. My niece turns to me "Uncle, this leg of the trip we'll be using a wormhole junction."

"Huh?"

"Think about it. It's dawn on Friday morn. How else can we travel for fifteen hours and yet still arrive on Friday 3 PM? We're hypering!"

Out of the mouth of babes. I never thought of it that way!

That's not all. Upon landing, someone got sick and needed an airsickness bag. My niece is cracking up.

"Princess, that's not nice."

"I'm not laughing at the guy Uncle. I'm laughing at how closely it ties in with hyper travel."

"Huh?"

"Downward translations make you toss your cookies. See?!"

Now I'm cracking up. And it's rather difficult to explain our apparent rudeness. I just gave up. Laughing too hard. My sister isn't amused, which makes it even funnier.

"I swear, you two!"

P.S.
I guess the junctions are closed on the trip there. Now I know how the Sollies feel. Damn near lost an entire day!


****** *

A Rising Thunder - fire stoked from 'passages' thread.

“They hit our wedges!” Steinberg blurted. “My God, they hit our wedges!”
Her tone was so disbelieving—and so affronted—that despite himself, Pyun actually felt his mouth twitch on the edge of a smile. The ops officer was staring incredulously at her displays as CIC’s dispassionate computers updated them.
It was true. It had happened so quickly, the X-ray lasers had cascaded in in such a massive tide, that it had taken Steinberg (and Pyun, for that matter) several endless seconds to grasp what had actually happened—to realize they were still alive—yet it was true.

I've always been unclear on something and this passage has stoked an old fire. When a wedge is hit, is there not some form of energy bleeding thru to the ships? At least enough to know that the wedge has been hit? ... akin to the Enterprise's shields being impacted and transient energy back feeding into the ship and systems.

Just trying to visualize the Honorverse.

cthia wrote:
A Rising Thunder - fire stoked from 'passages' thread.

“They hit our wedges!” Steinberg blurted. “My God, they hit our wedges!”
Her tone was so disbelieving—and so affronted—that despite himself, Pyun actually felt his mouth twitch on the edge of a smile. The ops officer was staring incredulously at her displays as CIC’s dispassionate computers updated them.
It was true. It had happened so quickly, the X-ray lasers had cascaded in in such a massive tide, that it had taken Steinberg (and Pyun, for that matter) several endless seconds to grasp what had actually happened—to realize they were still alive—yet it was true.

I've always been unclear on something and this passage has stoked an old fire. When a wedge is hit, is there not some form of energy bleeding thru to the ships? At least enough to know that the wedge has been hit? ... akin to the Enterprise's shields being impacted and transient energy back feeding into the ship and systems.

Just trying to visualize the Honorverse.

Nope, or at least, not enough to do any damage at all. Think of the wedge planes as flat black holes - their gravitational gradient is so high, that nothing, not even light (which is basically what lasers and grasers are) can escape.

OTOH, I doubt they're *quite* as powerful as a black hole, so there *may* be some bleed-through, but again, it's obviously nothing significant, or we would have seen textev for it.

That's also why nothing physical can break through a wedge: it just gets torn apart by the gravitational stresses.

A sidewall is basically the same thing, but much less powerful. The grav gradient is high enough to bend or scatter light, but not high enough to swallow it whole, which is why you see hits through them. That bending ability is a double-edged sword as well. Beams that may have missed completely could get bent and cause a hit, while others that would have been a direct hit might get bent away.

Edit: Also remember that there are *two* wedges, one just inside the other. Any possible bleed-through from the outer wedge would be further absorbed by the inner wedge.

Edit #2: Although, with the film, I'm sure for the gee-whiz factor, we'll see some sort of effects of the wedge being hit. "Rule of cool" and all that.

cthia wrote:A Rising Thunder - fire stoked from 'passages' thread.

“They hit our wedges!” Steinberg blurted. “My God, they hit our wedges!”
Her tone was so disbelieving—and so affronted—that despite himself, Pyun actually felt his mouth twitch on the edge of a smile. The ops officer was staring incredulously at her displays as CIC’s dispassionate computers updated them.
It was true. It had happened so quickly, the X-ray lasers had cascaded in in such a massive tide, that it had taken Steinberg (and Pyun, for that matter) several endless seconds to grasp what had actually happened—to realize they were still alive—yet it was true.

I've always been unclear on something and this passage has stoked an old fire. When a wedge is hit, is there not some form of energy bleeding thru to the ships? At least enough to know that the wedge has been hit? ... akin to the Enterprise's shields being impacted and transient energy back feeding into the ship and systems.

Just trying to visualize the Honorverse.

It takes an ungodly amount of energy hitting the wedge before you can physicly feel it in the ship. Out of all of the times we have seen things hit wedges, the only time text mentioned feeling it was when the tug took a good chunck of a deorbiting space station on its wedge.

The difference between a weapons hit on the wedge and that is kind of like shining a pen laser on a surface verse throwing the pen laser at it. Sure, the laser beam will have some effect, but it would be below the threshold that a human could sence it.

Personally, I suspect that the force the tug felt was due to the wedge accelerating a huge amount of mass, and that would have caused it to buck in strange ways that the compensator would have had a hard time canceling.

cthia wrote:
A Rising Thunder - fire stoked from 'passages' thread.

“They hit our wedges!” Steinberg blurted. “My God, they hit our wedges!”
Her tone was so disbelieving—and so affronted—that despite himself, Pyun actually felt his mouth twitch on the edge of a smile. The ops officer was staring incredulously at her displays as CIC’s dispassionate computers updated them.
It was true. It had happened so quickly, the X-ray lasers had cascaded in in such a massive tide, that it had taken Steinberg (and Pyun, for that matter) several endless seconds to grasp what had actually happened—to realize they were still alive—yet it was true.

I've always been unclear on something and this passage has stoked an old fire. When a wedge is hit, is there not some form of energy bleeding thru to the ships? At least enough to know that the wedge has been hit? ... akin to the Enterprise's shields being impacted and transient energy back feeding into the ship and systems.

Just trying to visualize the Honorverse.

crewdude48 wrote:
It takes an ungodly amount of energy hitting the wedge before you can physicly feel it in the ship. Out of all of the times we have seen things hit wedges, the only time text mentioned feeling it was when the tug took a good chunck of a deorbiting space station on its wedge.

The difference between a weapons hit on the wedge and that is kind of like shining a pen laser on a surface verse throwing the pen laser at it. Sure, the laser beam will have some effect, but it would be below the threshold that a human could sence it.

Personally, I suspect that the force the tug felt was due to the wedge accelerating a huge amount of mass, and that would have caused it to buck in strange ways that the compensator would have had a hard time canceling.

crewdude wrote:
Out of all of the times we have seen things hit wedges, the only time text mentioned feeling it was when the tug took a good chunck of a deorbiting space station on its wedge.

Perhaps also when Rafe "Guns" Cardones managed to sneak in a contact nuke in against Thunder of God?

cthia wrote:I've always been unclear on something and this passage has stoked an old fire. When a wedge is hit, is there not some form of energy bleeding thru to the ships? At least enough to know that the wedge has been hit? ... akin to the Enterprise's shields being impacted and transient energy back feeding into the ship and systems.

Just trying to visualize the Honorverse.

In addition to all the other reasons given: Wedges are BIG. If Wedges had the physical mass that their gravitic gradients suggest, it would be like trying to push a small planet or star out of the way.

cthia wrote:Perhaps also when Rafe "Guns" Cardones managed to sneak in a contact nuke in against Thunder of God?

No, that was hitting the ship, not the wedge. Bit of a difference there.

crewdude48 wrote:

cthia wrote:
Perhaps also when Rafe "Guns" Cardones managed to sneak in a contact nuke in against Thunder of God?

No, that was hitting the ship, not the wedge. Bit of a difference there.

Yea. Just a little diff.

Thanks.