An entry with a Bang! - A BT roundrobin II

[Magni]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

Well, you're going to get spam, maybe Earth could use its' intelligence on the various factions such as DC and FFS and air all their dirty laundry. Y'know all the embarrassing stuff you don't want your subjects and opposition to know; plus it has the advantage of destroying C*'s ability to blackmail its' opponents when the blackmail material has been aired. Heh! I wonder what dirty little secrets that C* has that the GDI could expose which would cause enormous embarrassment and grief.

Well, I wasn't literally meaning spam (though that *would* be mean, considering that the Black boxes work like fax machines, so you'd burn paper like mad). More like a lot of false news and reports, to the point where nobody will be able to tell the real stuff from all the garbage.

And that's pretty much the problem. There is no way to distinguish between false and right reports sent. Hell, there afaik isn't even the ability to tell the sender. And the moment that someone begins to throw in a lot of, at first glance, plausible bullshit, the whole system becomes untrustworthy.

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

The biggest problem with false flagging GDI is that GDI has a rather distinctive technological and resultant fighting style. People are going to smell a rat if the "GDI" forces aren't using stuff like heavy missiles that never miss, combined armed tactics, and so on.

Evil's got a good point there concerning how GDI forces fight and their "Lostech" edge. It's something that occurred to me also.

[Nikas]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

The biggest problem with false flagging GDI is that GDI has a rather distinctive technological and resultant fighting style. People are going to smell a rat if the "GDI" forces aren't using stuff like heavy missiles that never miss, combined armed tactics, and so on.

"These blaster marks? Too precise for Storm Troopers, only Imperial Special Effect Technicians are so precise?"

They only need to leave a few survivors, that see some machines faked up to look GDI from a distance by civies running for their lives. Or fake up the 'survivors' along with the battle and the GDI forces.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Magni

Well, I wasn't literally meaning spam (though that *would* be mean, considering that the Black boxes work like fax machines, so you'd burn paper like mad). More like a lot of false news and reports, to the point where nobody will be able to tell the real stuff from all the garbage.

Funny thing, but I assumed Earth would be selling something a bit more sophisticated than a fax machine. They'd take out the fax part and put in a more software based email interface. Basically a memory buffer for holding email. And unless you're sending/receiving pictures, email should be alot more bandwidth friendly than a fax machine.

Printer sold separately.

And that's pretty much the problem. There is no way to distinguish between false and right reports sent. Hell, there afaik isn't even the ability to tell the sender. And the moment that someone begins to throw in a lot of, at first glance, plausible bullshit, the whole system becomes untrustworthy.

And of course, all broadcast email comes with a header saying who's transmitting. Each transmitter would probably come with a hard coded MAC address equivalent that would be appended to all outgoing messages.

Now that won't prevent the forging of MAC addresses, but the forging wouldn't be easy. And then the real owner can just broadcast, "Someone is broadcasting in my name!"

[Valiran]

Originally Posted by consequences

I'm thinking Comstar should get a clue sometime in the next decade or so, and after Waterly takes over, make her usual ham-handed 'let's fake up a house unit to commit an atrocity maneuver' by mocking up a sizable portion of the AFFS sometime in the early 3030s.

Said planned atrocity runs straight into the teeth of the Nuclear defense grid at the Earth-Sun L1 point, because Earth was damned careful about letting people actually into the Sol system, and after trying the same thing three times previously, C* bloody well deserves having its teeth kicked down its throat for trying it.

...yyyeeeeessssss!!!

This also brought something to my attention that I should have noticed earlier. When it comes to fortifying a system, all we need to do is seed the area around every jump point with nuclear mines. Just a warhead, casing, engine, and some small thrusters so it can orient itself.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Valiran

...yyyeeeeessssss!!!

This also brought something to my attention that I should have noticed earlier. When it comes to fortifying a system, all we need to do is seed the area around every jump point with nuclear mines. Just a warhead, casing, engine, and some small thrusters so it can orient itself.

While I have no problem with nuking a Comstar raider, leaving nuclear mines lying around with no human supervision probably falls under the "too trigger happy for own good" heading.

[Duna Typon]

Some Points

The black box can do high level fax print job, then you could also use it as a computer modem may not be the big ADSL line but I like internet with a 30LY range.


Nukes, as in Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons that is a fusion weapon that is a pure fusion bomb, without a fission bomb inside it.

[PossiblyEnos]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

Now that won't prevent the forging of MAC addresses, but the forging wouldn't be easy. And then the real owner can just broadcast, "Someone is broadcasting in my name!"

Which the faker could also do ... first.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by PossiblyEnos

Which the faker could also do ... first.

Either way, people would know the source address had been compromised.

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by Duna Typon

Nukes, as in Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons that is a fusion weapon that is a pure fusion bomb, without a fission bomb inside it.

Pure fusion TN warheads, while theoretically possible, are currently beyond Earth technical capacity to build (the DoE and its' predecessor, the AEC, have tried for decades with no success). Also pure fusion TN warheads can still generate radioactive fallout via neutron activation, especially given the fact that fusion spectrum neutrons are far more energetic than fission spectrum neutrons (14.1MeV vs ~1MeV).

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

Pure fusion TN warheads, while theoretically possible, are currently beyond Earth technical capacity to build

At 10K+ nukes being built a year, the need to R&D such a thing is pretty dubious, although not having to rebuild the nuke casing every 10 years because of neutron radiation induced decay would be nice.

Actually, this might be something that we would want to have the BT side research. After all, they don't have lots of nuke plants sitting around. Being able to build nukes out of what amounts to off the shelf parts could really reduce infrastructure costs.

[Chaos Blade]

True, plus you don't have to store, refine or handle radioactive materials during construction or maintenance.
And, If I understand correctly the radioactive footprint of a fourth gen pure fusion nuke should be considerably smaller than its equivalent KT fission-fusion device

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

At 10K+ nukes being built a year, the need to R&D such a thing is pretty dubious, although not having to rebuild the nuke casing every 10 years because of neutron radiation induced decay would be nice.

Neutron emissions aren't really a problem in a nuclear warhead unless significant amounts of Thorium (low level gamma-emissions are also a problem) is present, also it's not a problem with Plutonium unless there's a a high Pu-240 content(>6%). But that's only a problem if you're using reactor grade Plutonium from a civilian reactor (weapons-grade Pu-239 is made in especially designed breeder reactors; the fuel-rods in for maybe 100 days before removal). Although it may become feasible to seperate the Pu-239 from the undesirable isotopes if and when AVLIS and MLIS technology is brought to maturity and put into production.
This is an area where the Russians might be ahead of the UK and US, as although their warheads are larger and heavier, it's not so much due to being behind nuclear weapons tech (i'd say they're right up their with Western weaponeers), but simply due to the fact that they design their warheads with a) reliability and b) long shelf-life in mind. Quite a few US designs are "tempromental(sic)" due to the R&D phase being rushed and trying to make them as light as possible, as small as possible but with a yield as big as possible.

[VhenRa]

Erm... there is a good possiblity Battletech Nukes ARE Pure Fusion Nukes.

I mean... someone thought a nuclear warhead was still viable... after being locked in a bunker for what... since the 2nd Succession War (This is 3010 btw)

No idea how a nuclear warhead would work after being locked away for a good 200 years...

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by VhenRa

Erm... there is a good possiblity Battletech Nukes ARE Pure Fusion Nukes.

I mean... someone thought a nuclear warhead was still viable... after being locked in a bunker for what... since the 2nd Succession War (This is 3010 btw)

No idea how a nuclear warhead would work after being locked away for a good 200 years...

A pure fusion warhead probably wouldn't be any use after 200 years of storage either. Even though a nuclear warhead has almost no moving parts, it still needs regular inspection and maintanance.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

A pure fusion warhead probably wouldn't be any use after 200 years of storage either. Even though a nuclear warhead has almost no moving parts, it still needs regular inspection and maintanance.

He's talking about Battletech nukes, and everything BT has ragnarok proofing, remember?

[Blade4]

Been meaning to toss this in for a day or two but can never find a good moment but...

When the clans finally do attack the IS I say we let them attack unhindered... for the first three waves or so and then once they are so committed to the invasion they can't really back out we hit them were it will hurt the most the jumpships. We concentrate on capturing or killing everyone of them we can and force them to eventually either pull out what forces they can with their remaining jumpships out of the IS or be cut off in the face of a truly pissed IS with ever dwindling supplies.

This will bloody the IS and give them yet one more good reason to get off their asses and innovate and will probable really fuck up the initial invading clans and all without us necessarily throwing all our forces into the grinder to protect ungrateful backstabby bastards.

So what do you guys think?

[Big D]

For system defense, just put a few small stations at each true L-1 point, with nuclear missiles (preferably with ASF engines, not capmis rockets) aimed at the L-1 Jump Point nearby. Find a few dozen/hundred people who don't mind living in a bunker for a few months at a time, and rotate them out with a DS or shuttle.

As far as giving away black boxes for free... I'd be very careful with that.

For starters, we don't have black boxes. We'd have to trade for them, something incredibly valuable like giving Hanse exclusive rights (as best as we can keep the secret) to the novels. That would undoubtedly have strings attached, like "keep them secret", that we would not want to readily violate.

Alternatively, we'd have to get insanely lucky. Black boxes were only found in *one* cache, deep in the Lyran periphery, by accident. There are no other accounts of any being found anywhere else, and it's possible that there aren't any anywhere else. So, don't go around making plans for something we can't expect to get.

Now, raiding a HPG (under a false flag?) and learning how to build our own HPG network (including in our warships)... that's doable. A terrible strategic risk, especially early on, but doable.

[VhenRa]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

He's talking about Battletech nukes, and everything BT has ragnarok proofing, remember?

Aye... You can lock a Mech up for 500 Years...

Dust it off... refuel the fusion reactor... pump in coolant... reload the weapons... turn the key... and it will work.

[rdde]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

And of course, all broadcast email comes with a header saying who's transmitting. Each transmitter would probably come with a hard coded MAC address equivalent that would be appended to all outgoing messages.

Now that won't prevent the forging of MAC addresses, but the forging wouldn't be easy. And then the real owner can just broadcast, "Someone is broadcasting in my name!"

Regarding message authentication codes (MACs), their authentication factor could have remained simple enough for us to crack. Their level might even actually be on the message integrity code (MIC) level, which doesn't have auth. I'll blame mainframe-without-PCs mentality on it. :P

There is still a window of opportunity though. If the message was innocuous enough to not require a response, the victim whose identity was stolen may not know of it until it is too late. And for messages that is bound to generate a response which could inform the victim that something bad is going on, there is the transit latency.

It's about a month for outlying C-class HPG stations right? One month fake message going there, one month response coming back, some idle time for investigations, and finally, one month 'my account has been compromised' going there. Sure, an express could be used, but it costs a lot and what if the falsified message was broadcasted across the entire realm?

The lack of message security here might also be a product of mainframe influence. It can be hard to compromise the terminals and all transit nodes should be secured. Also, without Moore's Curves in effect, cracking encryption would be extremely expensive and thus BT's cryptography field could very well be under-developed compared to our current state. We have the option to use the Public Key Infrastructure to sign our messages so that the recipients can validate that it was sent by us. The only practical way to compromise it is to steal the private key and the password for it.

Originally Posted by Valiran

When it comes to fortifying a system, all we need to do is seed the area around every jump point with nuclear mines.

They could just jump into any point 10 AU from the sun.

And once Brightstar comes online, you don't need to mine your local jump points. Earth could reach out for a few light-seconds, or maybe even a few light minutes (8.3 minutes to reach the sun (1 AU)), in any direction and inform the invaders of what we think of them.

Originally Posted by carter38

Been meaning to toss this in for a day or two but can never find a good moment but...

When the clans finally do attack the IS I say we let them attack unhindered... for the first three waves or so and then once they are so committed to the invasion they can't really back out we hit them were it will hurt the most the jumpships. We concentrate on capturing or killing everyone of them we can and force them to eventually either pull out what forces they can with their remaining jumpships out of the IS or be cut off in the face of a truly pissed IS with ever dwindling supplies.

This will bloody the IS and give them yet one more good reason to get off their asses and innovate and will probable really fuck up the initial invading clans and all without us necessarily throwing all our forces into the grinder to protect ungrateful backstabby bastards.

So what do you guys think?

I like it. It will certainly allow us to stretch our limited resources even further. We can't get them all, but doing so would severely wound the Clans and related IS factions.

The prediction scene would have to be changed or we could have C-Earth be a chaos generator.

I don't like seers.

[Gosu]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

The biggest problem with false flagging GDI is that GDI has a rather distinctive technological and resultant fighting style. People are going to smell a rat if the "GDI" forces aren't using stuff like heavy missiles that never miss, combined armed tactics, and so on.

In addition, if C* tries to pin this heinous act on the FedSuns before 08/3028, public outrage may derail the marriage of Davion and Steiner. After all can't have poor Melissa marrying a planet-nuking insane ruler who then also leads the Commonwealth, right?

That would certainly appeal to C*, three birds with one stone. Though in this case it would still be Primus Tiepolo, not Waterly.

[EdBecerra]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

And of course, all broadcast email comes with a header saying who's transmitting. Each transmitter would probably come with a hard coded MAC address equivalent that would be appended to all outgoing messages.

Now that won't prevent the forging of MAC addresses, but the forging wouldn't be easy. And then the real owner can just broadcast, "Someone is broadcasting in my name!"

You're all forgetting something - though it's not something most of the folks on this forum would be familiar with.

Public-key encryption has two uses. The first, and most obvious, of course, is encrypting a message.

But the OTHER use is encrypting your own name. What's that good for? It allows you to add a digital "signature" to any document. You're the only one who has that sig, and you're the only one who can generate it. Only YOUR public key can undo it, and thereby, it can only be generated by your private key. It's as unique as handwriting, and can be used for the same purpose.

So anything purporting to come from "you" should have just such a sig, and it should unlock with your public key. If it doesn't have a sig, or the sig it does have doesn't decrypt when pushed through your public key, folks will know that you probably didn't send it.

Wiki "Pretty Good Privacy" here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Incidentally, that's another weapon that the IS might not have, and if that's true, it's a weapon that'll give them a severe pain in the rear. Heavy duty encryption software like that was once considered to be a "munition" and controlled by the laws concerning the import and export of Class 3 weaponry.

I expect that strong encryption is something the Successor states do not like, and export of encryption software will, as I noted above, give them a real pain, as any home grown rebels will love it.

Simple netbooks loaded with PGP will live in the nightmares of the intelligence services of the Inner Sphere...

Ed.

[EdBecerra]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

This is an area where the Russians might be ahead of the UK and US, as although their warheads are larger and heavier, it's not so much due to being behind nuclear weapons tech (i'd say they're right up their with Western weaponeers), but simply due to the fact that they design their warheads with a) reliability and b) long shelf-life in mind.

Russians design everything with reliability and longevity in mind. There are still SMUGs from World War 2 in regular use around the planet. You practically have to use a cutting torch to ruin an AK-47.

I knew one guy who brought one home from Vietnam, kept it in a locker for months on end, would hit the bolt with a hammer to jar it free from the rust, and then fire it as if nothing had happened. If a little carbon had built up in the barrel, he'd 'clean' it with some handy piss.

Damned thing was scary reliable.

Ed.

[Vianca]

Originally Posted by Carter38

Been meaning to toss this in for a day or two but can never find a good moment but...

When the clans finally do attack the IS I say we let them attack unhindered... for the first three waves or so and then once they are so committed to the invasion they can't really back out we hit them were it will hurt the most the jumpships. We concentrate on capturing or killing everyone of them we can and force them to eventually either pull out what forces they can with their remaining jumpships out of the IS or be cut off in the face of a truly pissed IS with ever dwindling supplies.

This will bloody the IS and give them yet one more good reason to get off their asses and innovate and will probable really fuck up the initial invading clans and all without us necessarily throwing all our forces into the grinder to protect ungrateful backstabby bastards.

So what do you guys think?

Originally Posted by rdde

I like it. It will certainly allow us to stretch our limited resources even further. We can't get them all, but doing so would severely wound the Clans and related IS factions.

The prediction scene would have to be changed or we could have C-Earth be a chaos generator.

I don't like seers.

And if C-Earth has gotten the ships from Odessa, then any clan warship in the way of the normal jumpships can be dealt with.

Hope we can hire certain merc's before that time happens.

[StarSpawn]

Originally Posted by DarkObelisk

Actually I posted it for a specific reason.

Sometime in the future I'm planning to write a part about an underground railroad. And in one part of it I was planning on a firefight breaking out. The plan was for them to get their weapons through the American members.

So I'm just setting the base for some later parts.


Well and also because Ed seems to be such a nice guy.

The problem with that post DarkO, is that there is no way the Supreme court wouldn't point out the OTHER part of the 2' amendment gun crazy people always seems to overlook. IE You know the Militia part.
Otherwise you are just laying the ground work for another feudal society with *I have an armored car because I'm filthy rich, and it has an auto cannon, you have a pump gun, now give me your money, your teenage daughter and you weapons or i will blow you and your family to kingdom come*.
It always amazes me that gun crazies overlook that part of human nature.