4/5/900 The first two Strug freighters are launched from the orbital yards. They are immediately put to work hauling automated mines to the twelfth moon of Home A-XII, the system?s outermost gas giant. This moon has moderate amounts of six different trans-uranic minerals, all at good to very-good availability levels. The moon has an acceptable gravity for colonization, but is a bit cold. As the Strug have no colony ships, no population transfer is planned for the immediate future.
10/1/901 The first Strug warship, the Tharsis Montes, is launched from the orbital yards.
11/21/903 Strug sensors detect the launch of three medium sized objects into orbit around The Sister.
12/30/905
In the aftermath of the ?Armor Fiasco?, as the revelation of the weakness in the Planetary Defense Shield became known, the Strug military moved to ensure that it would not be caught unawares again. Many different initiatives were undertaken, some successful, some not. One of the first concepts put forward was the formation of ?Concept Teams?, multi-disciplinary teams set up to examine various aspects of the Strug military. To avoid favoritism and fear of consequences, and to encourage freethinking, the teams were only identified by numbers, and the membership of each team was classified. Each team was given areas of study, or in some cases they were allowed to pick their own areas of study. Each team generated reports that were then forwarded to the highest levels of leadership in the two main branches of the Strug military, the Orbital Defense Command and the Planetary Defense Command.
The Concept Team idea met with mixed success. Many of the people assigned to the teams were unable to break free of the usual way of looking at things, while others couldn?t resist the chance to try and bolster their promotional chances rather than effect real change. Many of the teams simply came up with impractical ideas, and were ultimately disbanded. Several teams, though, provided true insight into holes in the prevailing Strug strategies.
Team A1490-SRT was one of the groups assigned to review the proposed response to the Armor Fiasco. In the aftermath of the revelation, the Orbital Defense Command had accelerated its planned upgrade program for the orbital defense bases, and had successfully convinced the Assembly to fund a massive research program to develop and field superior 12 CM point defense laser turrets. Team A1490-SRT, using available engineering and design information, was able to show in short order that increasing the size of the point defense lasers was a less than optimal route. Armoring missiles against a 12 CM laser, as opposed to a 10 CM laser, would merely require 33% more armor, a near trivial amount at current tech levels, and considering the size of the planetary defense missiles used by both sides. The Orbital Defense Command had considered this factor, and had plans in the works to eventually upgrade their orbital defense bases to 15 cm point defense laser turrets, but this would not be accomplished for at least five to ten years. In the meantime the Strug faced the possibility that their planet would be essentially defenseless, if the Colonists up-armored their missiles.
After identifying the problem, Team A1490-SRT made an alternate recommendation. Digging through tech reports and research histories, the team discovered and cataloged several different weapons systems, some of which had promising capabilities in regards to point defense. One, in particular, seemed exactly on point. Meson weaponry, as fantastic as it seemed, ignored armor completely, and it could be installed in a turret. If the Strug defense bases were equipped with meson point defense weapons, it wouldn?t matter how much armor the Colonists put on their missiles.
The Meson Proposal made quite a splash. The Orbital Defense Command was dead set against the proposal, perhaps understandably, given the money, time, and effort tied up in laser weaponry. The proposal had been widely distributed, though, and enough questions were asked by outsiders that the ODC was forced to go to great lengths to justify its continued reliance on laser weaponry. The entire event caused quite a political brouhaha, but the ODC stuck to its position. In the end, research on 12 cm lasers for the ODC continued, and the PDC began investigating meson weaponry for its ground bases. The government put the best face it could on the confusion and the military?s intransigence, presenting the split focus between the PDC and the ODC as a ?defense in depth?. Two new defense units were designed, an updated Olympus Mons II orbital base with 12 cm laser batteries and the Archeron Catena class planetary defense center with anti-missile meson cannons.
Team A1490-SRT made many other recommendations, but one would stand out much later. Like many other teams, Team A1490-SRTwas asked to review the Five Minute War, in an effort to glean every lesson possible from the conflict. While studying the records, the team went off on a tangent that they found very interesting. The war had been fought under unusual circumstances, in that the entire military and political command structure was on alert and available in one place to make the decisions necessary to prosecute the war. This was not the usual situation as all of the relevant leaders had separate command centers and different schedules. The team members began asking difficult questions, and were unsettled by what they found. Their report pointed out the following facts:
1. The alien planetary defense missiles had a maximum speed of 15,000 kps, and their launchers had a reload time of 60 seconds.
2. The distance between Strug Home and The Sister varies from a minimum of 100,000 to a maximum of 720,000 kilometers.
3. This means that the travel time of a salvo of missiles from The Sister varies from 6.6 seconds to 48 seconds.
4. In reality, the warning time to the Strug chain of command would be even less, because the anti-missile sensors used by the ODC and the PDC have a maximum range of 384,000 kilometers, reducing the warning time associated with a maximum range launch from 48 seconds to 25.6 seconds.
5. The official SOP for both the ODC and the PDC for this situation was as follows:
A. Resident AI warns unit commander/officer of the watch of detected missiles incoming from The Sister;
B. Commander requests verification;
C. Commander warns ODC/PDC Joint Planetary Command Center (JPCC)
D. JPCC watch officer requests independent verification
E. JPCC watch officer informs political command structure (Office of the Supreme Leader, Military Liaison)
F. Military Liaison briefs the Supreme Leader, obtains launch release decision
G. Military Liaison communicates decision to the JPCC watch officer
H. JPCC watch officer communications decision to all ODC and PDC commands.
The analysis by Team A1490-SRT revealed the fact that, even in a best-case scenario where the SOP was followed exactly and everything worked as it should, it would take 9 to 10 minutes from first detection to dissemination of the launch order before the Strug military would be able to respond to the launch. The ODC and its point defense lasers would be able to respond immediately, of course, but the PDC would be paralyzed until it received authorization to respond. In ten minutes the aliens on the Sister would be able to launch ten missile salvoes, and even if the ODC performed well, no defense was perfect and leaking missiles could cause incalculable damage. Worse, the analysis pointed out the fact that the chain of notifications would almost certainly take longer than anticipated, even with AI/Net facilitation. If even one person in the chain was asleep, the time required stretched out alarmingly. That was unlikely on the military side, of course, as every position was filled by a watch officer of some sort, but on the civilian side there was almost certain to be delays and uncertainty. Even worse, if the Supreme Leader sought outside counsel prior to making his/her decision, it was entirely likely that the entire process could take much, much longer than anticipated. Finally, if the ODC failed and missiles from the first wave got through, it was entirely possible that the Supreme Leader and the civilian government would be dead before notification of the attack reached them. Ironically, the team concluded that the situation where the civilian government was decapitated in the first wave of the attack was actually the best-case scenario, as it would allow the military to respond immediately rather than waiting for authorization.
The team made several recommendations, all of which were dismissed as impractical. The political leadership was not ready to delegate the authority to retaliate to the military, and no one thought it was a good idea to delegate such authority to an AI, no matter how it was constrained.
Meanwhile, on The Sister:
The Colonists had observed with dismay as the Strug had explored the system. The dismay turned into something else when the Strug began colonizing other planets within the system. The Strug activities were running up against old imperatives established within the Colonist civilization, and the need to do something about it was becoming urgent. The only reason the Colonists hadn?t already launched an attack against the Strug was that they hadn?t completed rebuilding from the last war, and the Colonist leaders were fairly certain that they wouldn?t get a third chance. Therefore, every effort was being made to prepare for the next conflict, which would start as soon as they were ready.
Strug Home
Population: 635 million
Shipyards: 3/7
CF: 650
Ord. Fac: 100
Fuel Ref: 300
Mines: 650
A. Mines: 0
RL: 26
Fin Cen: 62
Mass Driver: 6
GFTF: 3
Nav. Academy: 3
DSTS: 7
Military: 7xSyria Planum PDC, 1xArcheron Catena AMPDC, 14xOlympus Mons BS (Two in the docks for refit), 2xOlympus Mons II, 2xTharsis Montes CLE
Survey Command: 1xValles Marineris (5,900 ton GeoSurvey ship)
Civilian Transport: 10xXanthe Terra Freighters
Home A-XII, Moon 12
Automated Mines: 200
Mass Driver: 4
DSTS: 3
Home A-V
Infrastructure: 1000
Archeron Catena AMC class Planetary Defence Centre 9950 tons 1088 Crew 1529.8 BP TCS 39.8 TH 0 EM 0
Armour 3 Sensors 96/192 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 80
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range N/A
Twin R1.5/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (10x2) Range 15,000km TS: 12800 km/s Power 6-6 RM 1.5 ROF 5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
PD Fire Control (5) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 12800 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (5) Total Power Output 70 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Ship Sensor, Large (1) GPS 7680 Range 76.8m km Resolution 40
Missile Sensor, Large (1) GPS 38.4 Range 384k km Resolution 0.2
Thermal Sensor, Large (1) Sensitivity 96 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 96m km
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre
Olympus Mons Flt II class Base 5900 tons 563 Crew 1044 BP TCS 118 TH 0 EM 1200
1 km/s Armour 1 Shields 40-400 Sensors 1/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 33
Replacement Parts 5
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range N/A
Gamma R400/16 Shields (20) Total Fuel Cost 320 Litres per day
Twin 12cm C4 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (3x2) Range 96,000km TS: 12800 km/s Power 8-8 RM 3 ROF 5 4 4 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 0
PD Fire Control (3) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 12800 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (2) Total Power Output 28 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Missile Sensor, Large (1) GPS 38.4 Range 384k km Resolution 0.2
