Synchronicity War Part 1, The by Dietmar Wehr Page A

wouldn’t mind getting a fresh perspective on
some of the things we came up with. The Plan isn’t cast in stone. We’ll be
adding to it and revising it as we go along, so your input could be quite
useful. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s order some food, and then I’ll tell
you the highlights of the Plan.”
     
    Which is exactly what they proceeded to do.
     
    After their food and beverage order had been taken, Shiloh
leaned forward and said, “Okay, as I recall, there are some 89 specific
recommendations in the Plan. The overall strategy calls for limited
reconnaissance and raiding operations in the short run, followed by a gradually
stepped up tempo with more aggressive missions as the force structure permits.
That’s where things get interesting. We know from GED records that an Exploration
Frigate can be built in eight weeks by a UFC. An FE masses about 20,000 metric
tons, so that works out to 2,500 tons per week. The Plan calls for the eventual
construction of 800 million tons of warship and support ship capacity.”
     
    Johansen whistled in amazement. “My God! Is that even do-able?”
     
    Shiloh chuckled. “It is if you can create hundreds of UFCs
through exponential growth. The problem with that huge tonnage figure is that
it includes a lot of REALLY BIG ships. I’m talking monsters in excess of a
million tons each! Now, even if you have multiple UFCs working together to
fabricate parts, these battleships will still take a couple of years to build,
at least, and that doesn’t include the design phase which will probably take a
year all by itself. The Plan recognizes that we can’t wait that long to get offensive
muscle. We have to acquire something more capable than exploration frigates,
and we need them now!”
     
    Johansen nodded. “Okay, so what’s the answer?”
     
    “The answer is a series of increasingly larger units as time
goes on. Based on our encounter, the group agreed that exploration frigates are
too vulnerable in terms of armor to risk in a standup fight. So the Plan calls
for the design of an autonomous fighting platform, which you can think of as a
super large drone. The AFP will be a generic design that can carry a variety of
modular payloads. Everything from a single very powerful laser turret, to multiple
decoy or attack drones. Even to a small self-contained refueling unit that the
AFP could use to skim gas giants and process small amounts of heavy hydrogen
that can be transported back to the Mothership as a way of refueling larger
ships without risking them in a gas giant’s upper atmosphere. Each AFP would be
very heavily armored. They can be carried externally using the same racks that
we use to carry smaller drones externally. Empty, they’ll mass slightly less
than 2,000 tons, so a UFC should be able to build five of them every four weeks,
once we get the design perfected. Eventually we’ll have large carriers that
will carry dozens of them. Until then, they’ll have to be carried by supply
ships or tankers. They’ll be designed to avoid detection both from passive and
active scanning, and their small size will make them hard to hit. Since they
won’t have human crews, they’ll be able to withstand acceleration in excess of
what our inertial dampeners can handle, and that will make them very
maneuverable. And if their primary weapon system is used up or disabled,
they’ll ram an enemy ship if a window of opportunity presents itself, and the
small tactical nuke that each one will carry will detonate on impact – or if
the aliens try to dismantle it.”
     
    Johansen’s face showed an expression of devious delight. “I
love it! What else?”
     
    Shiloh chuckled. “Okay. How about a manned vehicle that’s
about one third the size of an exploration frigate, designed to be carried into
battle by a larger ship, with just enough room and life support for four to six
crew, for up to 10 days. It will be heavily armored and carry a salvo of fast
but short duration