Wasn't the ERM enough? Why bother with the Mk 16?

lyonheart wrote:Hi Neo-Bob,

I realise you're new but the Mk-16 has been around about 10 years real time in our universe, so it's hard for us old members to consider it should never have happened.

Lyonheart:

Just for the record-- I am NOT new. I have been reading these boards without posting since I got back from Iraq in 2006; I started reading and posting on the old, yellow, baen's bar buships forum in 1998. Some of the software changes slowed the bar so much it became painful to read, and I had some other things to do then anyway, when I returned to the Guard in 2000, got retrained, and then deployed.

However, I am not a navy or air force vet; I am a retired intel geek from the days when radios used thumbscrews, and "cryptanalysis" consisted of untangling soviet grids from their "swiss roll" formatted encryption. You know, the 1970s. Back when half the soviet army was comprised of people who spoke either turkish or Mongolian or some dialect Finnish. Although my particular expertise was the East Germans ground forces, which didn't amount to much.

I got out of that job in the mid-80s to go back to indirect fire infantry in an UN-automated fdc without any computers in sight. So my view on things is maybe a bit different from someone who grew up with tech, or someone who used it constantly. Naval and Air force tech was a lot better than we had in the dirt.

Rob

Lyonheart,

you mentioned above that the Mk16 has been around for about ten years. My point at the start was I didn't see why it was needed, plotwise. But I haven't seen the plot to the end, yet, and while I reconsider the timing, it is actually about right.

I guess the problem is that the author just didn't write much combat stuff for the light ships from ca. 1913 until the new war started. SoSag is 1921, though, so the timing makes a lot of sense anyway, which Dukk was kind enough not to rub my nose in.

But he is also right about BuShips (DW) re-thinking classes and tech. It just seems that the BuShips didn't do any design upgrades for the lighter ships for nearly 15 years in a wartime environment. Freezing the design to get firepower out the door is one reason we built so many Essex class carriers in WWII; but we were much busier modifying the light ships like DDs and CLs. There were a LOT of different small classes; Farragut, Porter, Mahan, and a couple more classes of USN DD before we even got to the Fletcher class; and that was updated in 1943 to a 6-gun vessel (Sumner)from the Fletcher's 5 guns. Same hull, I think.

FWIW, when I read in HoS that there were "Type Commanders" who were responsible for design, training, and doctrine for each vessel class, I stopped to wonder what RFC had them doing for 15 years. Aside from the Saganami cruisers, light ships were ignored. Were they (TC's)so visible they were kept out of the loop for WDB activity? Part of the attempt to sidetrack spies? If he tells us, we'll know, but it is better for him as author not to. It lets him tell the story how he wants.

And, actually, I like reading his work, so pestering him about it is a bad idea.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I think the 'problem', for want of a better word, is that you're viewing the Mark 16 as a plot device. From what I've read here and on the pearls, that's not how RFC's tech growth works - the tech drives the plot, not the other way around.

MDMs completely changed the landscape of naval combat between ships of the wall. Any competent naval weapons designer would be asking whether the same technology could be applied to ships below the wall. Initially, the answer was probably no - you couldn't fit a large enough capacitor into a missile small enough to be carried in adequate numbers on a cruiser. That changed with the new miniaturised fusion reactors, making the Mark 16 possible. Once it was possible to build a DDM small enough to put on cruisers and cheap enough to mass-produce, why would they not do it?

1. I'm guessing HOS is house of steel? hats one of the one's i don't have sadly. Would like but don;t have. he velocity thing is mentioned in one of the early books btw. Can't remember where exactly .

Basically my point is unless Weber has himself come out and said something to the contrary i don't see how ERM's could make up the differences. They're longer range AFAIK, but where talking a full 50% increase in drive endurance to pull off even equivalency here in closing velocity to a single drive fired standard broadside. Anything less and the missiles come in slower, which makes them easier to kill.

2. I'm not arguing that the sollies couldn't kill some of them, but their interception percentages really sucked compared to what Havenite pulled vs the non-fusion stuff and sollies as bad as they may be certainly aren't vastly worse than the Havenits where back when fusion wasn't around. Even Crandal who probably stopped the biggest percentage of anyone only got 12.5% of total fired. We don';t have an exact number on her PD shots fired as we don't know her emitters per laser cluster numbers, or how much laser fire her limited escorts where chucking.Most later sollie forces do even worse than that in interception terms.

My point however is tat the difference in interception percentages alone compared to ERM's is going to make up the difference in magazine capacity before you throw in other improvements.

3. No wallers can't be everywhere, but when your trying to kick the snot out of another star nation your primary limitation is how much combat power you can project into enemy space. Get enough relative to him and you win. My point is any enemy which can't render Mk-14's combat ineffective is so far behind the tech curve that you don't need a lot of wallers compared to the total enemy forces of all types to roll them flat. See Buttercup for what happens in that situation.

4. Once again. Weber doesn't have his characters or star nations do the illogical things, (within their own internal frame of reference obviously). If a fusion powered cruiser missile is superior to a non-fusion one they are going to introduce it because they'd be acting dumb not to. Sure if introducing it would create an issue for his writing he can come up with a way to stop it happening, he's inventive enough. But if he's no reason not to, he's going to follow the logical progression because that's the realistic thing.

Think that's everything, (this has been sat waiting for me to finish it for a week, not been too well and busy elsewhere when I've felt like posting).

A bunch of the issues with incerction is software. Since in the Honorverse huge complex software projects are trivial to do (I'm looking at you, Mycroft), this should be fixable without a lot of time once someone decides the reports are accurate.

Y'all are missing one of the main points, which really shows up in the action at Solon, etc. and the realities of "war manufacturing", in order to suggest that a "fiction" plotline not chosen by the author makes more sense than the one he chose. I disagree. To use an analogy: why did the U.S. develop nukes when at the time they alone held atomic weapons? Because once developed they were easier to handle and produce in useful quantities across MANY different launch forms.

Now then, back to the future in the Honorverse, plot wise, the DDM primarily shows up as a factor for the screening units at the battle of Solon. Let's change that battle configuration slightly for discussion purposes and and assume that the RMN is worried about Eighth fleet getting jumped at a closer in hyper limit (higher than an ERM, maybe at the range of the Mk16).

Without the DDM, the screen is automatically useless and can't do a thing to help defend any of the SD(p)s against pod launching opponents. Bad tactical implications. So they develop the DDM. Okay, now you have the missile -- which uses an onboard fusion plant that is smaller than the capacitor driven missile it replaces, you can fit more in, and it's cheaper to produced than the ERM. Plus it has all of those other cool ddm advantages. so BuShips and BuWeaps would logically go "oh, gee -- with Talbott discovered etc. we have a lot of territory to scout and guard against pirates, two main missiles we need a lot of and... we can't dedicate a ton of large ships to that operation."

But they could design, build, and more quickly deploy these light-cruiser size destroyers for independent operations, and oh yeah, the corrupt folks with Janacek, etc. will approve the ship design because in their ideal universe those baddies can scoop off all of those funds not being spent because of reduced crew sizes for their own nefarious purposes...

It not only fits the plots of the books, but the reality of the missile production lines and the needs of not only the SKM but then the SEM even before the Mesan and Sollie baddies get all ramped up and ready to take a whack at our heroes.

Thoughts?

I'll play. Give me a strong case for how Solon shows that ships are better off carrying pods full of Mk16 rather then pods full of Mk23? Exactly how did having 40% more DDMs instead of full up MDMs improve the tactical situation, or could foreseeable HAVE improved the tactical situation given the original concept of operations?

OK. Keep in mind that Solon proved that ships full of MK-16 pods turned out to be a bad plan, which is why in later stories the Nike Class "super battle cruiser" (my term) is continued into much greater production numbers and the Agammemnon class isn't. But that's not the subject of the original post, why develop the dual drive cruiser weight missile at all vs. extended range missiles --> which would outrange anything except Haven's MDMs.

Back to Eight Fleet's deep raiding strategy, Because Shannon Foraker et al. are not tactical idiots, as time continues, the likelihood of running into deployed pods outside ERM range is absolutely going to happen. They've also got a pretty good count on Eighth Fleet's ships. Also assume that these Manticoran knows that eventually these deep raids are going to run mobile defenses at least as tough as that Tourville used at the Battle of Sidemore Station, and there's a whole lot of more cruisers in the defensive force to add to the Havenite SDp-Ps envelope. Now you need a missile that can range on those deployed system pods AND the opposing screen, so that when your SD-Ps localize and run into Haven's SD-Ps, it's mano a mano and the MDM-s aren't wasted thinning the screen. You also have the problem that those SD-Ps can blow the Manticoran screen away much more easily if those ships can't shoot back at all.

Back to Solon, where the Mk-16 ultimately did not alter the battle much at all. Before the engagement, Eighth Fleet did not know about the trap being laid with Moriarty, etc. where Twelfth Fleet's overall strategy was to destroy as much of Eighth Fleet as possible at maximum range and let the final salvo destroy what was left. Otherwise they would have jumped Eighth fleet at much shorter range into the hyper limit to minimize the missile defensive time available to the RMN, a reasonable expectation by Manticoran strategists.

Had that been the Havenite response, my "theory" is that had they done so at the approximate the range of the Mk-16 DDM, you can bet that Honor would have had the Aggies shoot themselves dry in basically "time on target" salvos to keep the opposing screening ships from adding to the SD-P(s) defenses, perhaps only in one of the Havenite formations, just to give her more options for pulling more of the RMN ships free of the trap, much the same way Amos Parnell fought his way free of White Haven's trap in SVW.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote:OK. Keep in mind that Solon proved that ships full of MK-16 pods turned out to be a bad plan, which is why in later stories the Nike Class "super battle cruiser" (my term) is continued into much greater production numbers and the Agammemnon class isn't. But that's not the subject of the original post, why develop the dual drive cruiser weight missile at all vs. extended range missiles --> which would outrange anything except Haven's MDMs.

(snip)

Modestly. For a little while. (Oops! Guess that window's gone - Cataphracts now outrange the ERM.)

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:OK. Keep in mind that Solon proved that ships full of MK-16 pods turned out to be a bad plan, which is why in later stories the Nike Class "super battle cruiser" (my term) is continued into much greater production numbers and the Agammemnon class isn't. But that's not the subject of the original post, why develop the dual drive cruiser weight missile at all vs. extended range missiles --> which would outrange anything except Haven's MDMs.

(snip)

Modestly. For a little while. (Oops! Guess that window's gone - Cataphracts now outrange the ERM.)

dreamrider

i need to dig up my attempt at a missile spreadsheet but iirc my best estimate was that the Cataphract (without a ballistic phase) was fairly close to the range of the ERMs. The 2nd stage, using the CM drive, is quick but short ranged. So it has much less continuously powered range than, say, a Mk16.

But of course the Cataphract, like all multi-drive or multi-stage missiles, can include a coast phase of indeterminate length.