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Title Posted
The pre-war importance of Basilisk Station Apr 2009
Elizabeth's new royal yacht, HMS <em>Duke of Cromarty</em> Apr 2009
Freighting LACs to the Talbott Quadrant Apr 2009
More on the sources of Manticoran wealth Apr 2009
With Apollo, do you really need armor any more? Apr 2009
The spillover effect from Manticore's Junction-created astrographic position Apr 2009
Shot weight vs shot size Apr 2009
Apollo fire control for light units Apr 2009
Overwhelming the RMN with light units Apr 2009
Why the Queen's Own exists Apr 2009

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Pearls of Weber

A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.

c-Fractional pod-based missile attack plan II

  • Series: Honorverse
  • Date: May 24, 2009

Most of the other issues you've raised vis-à-vis the Mesan pods are answered by two basic considerations. First, my comments about cee-fractional strikes were predicated on the [way?] the people wanted these things to come looking in at 80 or 90% of light-speed. The Mesan ships are down to only 20% of light-speed when they deploy their pods, which means that they're coming in at only somewhere around 60,000 KPS instead of 270,000 KPS. Moreover, they were specifically designed for this specific operation. You can think of it as the equivalent of the Japanese adapting their torpedoes for the Pearl Harbor attack so that they didn't drive as deep and bury themselves in the harbor mud when they were dropped. Each pod is equipped with specially designed ablative shielding which obviously wouldn't stand up to the erosion of weeks and weeks of .9 cee travel but is tough enough to survive this attack profile, especially since they're going to be given their long-range targeting information from pre-deployed sensor platforms. In other words, what needs to be protected is their relatively short-range sensors, not what they'd be using to [acquire] targets at long range for themselves.