Archives
| Title | Posted |
|---|---|
| The Fourth Empire's missing ships | Apr 2009 |
| Status of the Grand Alliance as of the start of <em>In Death Ground</em> | Apr 2009 |
| How do you pronounce 'Dahak'? | Apr 2009 |
| Why does towing pods decrease ship acceleration? | Apr 2009 |
| Firing through a drive band | Apr 2009 |
| Naval blockades | Apr 2009 |
| The rationale for the Theisman Buildup | Apr 2009 |
| Aftermath of the Terran Civil War | Apr 2009 |
| The pre-war importance of Basilisk Station | Apr 2009 |
| Treecat intelligence II | Apr 2009 |
Filters
Pearls of Weber
A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.
How big is a recon drone?
- Series: Honorverse
- Date: August 23, 2004
Just how big is a drone? Or is that classified information? Obviously, the size of the drone (assuming that the CMs proposed above would have to be drone-sized) is going to affect how reasonable it would be to think in terms of deploying them through missile tubes.
To give you an idea, the standard Manticoran counter-missile as of War of Honor, masses about 12.5 tons. Havenite counter-missiles are about 25% larger, and individually less capable despite their greater size. A single-drive capital ship missile runs to about 135 tons, or better than ten times the size of a single counter-missile. The remote platforms being deployed by the RMN these days, which would approximate the minimum size capable of squeezing in the proposed drive arrangement, are over twice the size of an old-style capital missile, which is why they are deployed by swimming them out of boat bays rather than firing them through tubes. So, let's assume that you could build one of these things for "only" 270 tons. In that case, each of them would replace something like 22 standard counter-missiles. Not a good trade in the opinion of the missile defense officers.
