Muv-luv Alternative -Right Stuff- 作：レイテンシー
CHatGPT pointed out that the density of information per story was too high, so we kept the word count low.
July 26, 2014
UN Army Yukon Base, Conference Room 207
Lieutenant Yuuya Bridges
The inside of a Hive is worse than Interstate 95 in winter. The interstate highways that crisscross America north to south are prone to slip accidents in winter. The surface of the Hive's underground stalk structure (stub) is even more elusive. It's hard and uneven.
Moreover, the average slope exceeds 20%. If entering by car, one should use a four-wheel drive. There's plenty of space, so vehicle height is not an issue. Just be careful where you merge.
Jokes aside, I'd like to explain why Hives are so difficult to conquer with existing land forces or conventional forces excluding the G-bomb. The true intent of the Japanese Empire in aiming to conquer Hives with conventional forces cannot be understood without grasping this.
It's not that America never aimed to conquer Hives with conventional forces. I feel like I mentioned this before. It wasn’t initially considered optimal to cause localized gravitational anomalies.
By the way, the paper documents detailing the Type-04 second batch have been collected. It’s classified, so it can't be helped, but the paper quality was so good that I wanted to take it home. Recycled paper just doesn’t feel as nice.
The United States' exploration into Hive conquest dates back to the HI-MAERF project in 1975, the year after the SIGN plan in 1974. It was clear to anyone that its outcomes were being utilized.
The project, participated in by Lockheed, North American, and McDonnell Douglas, aimed to develop the strategic aerial mobile fortress XG-70, powered mainly by the Muacock-Lechte engin.
Is the strategic aerial mobile fortress a conventional force? Its main engine operated on Grey 11, recovered from the SIGN plan. It was like a reusable G-bomb. However, in this context, all weapons excluding the G-bomb are considered conventional, so this counts as one.
I heard that the development progressed smoothly from those involved at the time. Everyone's eyes sparkled at the prospect of humanity's new frontier. Indeed, it would have been a source of pride for an engineer.
However, the biggest enemy of development stood in the way.
"It's nice to make such an elaborate machine, but wouldn't it be quicker to just hit them with this energy directly?"
That's the wall of reasoning. Scientific romance has always been hindered by this.
The XG-70 adopted ML anti-gravity engines for reactive gravitational propulsion, lifting an enormous mass of 10,000 tons comparable to a warship. It was equipped with an 8.5 TW class charged particle cannon, which used excess power generation to electrically accelerate and focus ionized metal particles. It featured a defensive system capable of withstanding continuous heavy laser-class irradiation for two minutes by generating a gravitational field, the Rutherford field, around the ship. It was armed with a giant railgun with a 2700 mm caliber, exceeding that of battleships. For anti-aircraft weaponry, it was equipped with 120mm railguns, 36mm chainguns, and VLS, possessing firepower exceeding 36 tactical machines.
All these were outperformed by the concept of simply pushing out a small amount of Grey 11 with momentum.
Every mechanism, a culmination of human wisdom, was defeated by just 21 grams of an unknown element.
This world is messed up.
The United States officially treated the outcomes of the HI-MAERF project with high secrecy, but didn't handle it all that seriously. Students could even request the materials.
The HI-MAERF project, having completed most of its processes smoothly, demonstrated the effectiveness of the G-bomb more than anything else.
Eventually, the project ended by creating minced meat out of 12 excellent test pilots in a test facility modeled after the Hive's underground stalk structure. At the national laboratory in Los Alamos, you can visit the XG-70 stored along with the underground stalk structure test facility. It's worth visiting if you're involved in the industry.
Thus, the final report of the HI-MAERF project was titled "This is an Interim Report of Hatred and Folly."
This was the result of the United States' first challenge.
In the world of software development, when solving a problem, one has to decide whether to approach it from the top or the bottom. However, this concept is hard to understand without actual experience. It's okay to skip over this.
As a technique, it's generally established to approach from the top. But most problems tend to bubble up from the bottom, and what falls from the sky is invariably dubious.
The HI-MAERF project was a result of approaching the problem of Hive conquest from the top. If the problem had been solved, it would have been great, but since it wasn't, there was a need to reflect on what went wrong.
A typical problem with top-down approaches is the lack of applicability of the measures. That none of the technological elements developed in the plan has been applied to modern ground warfare weapons gives some indication of this.
Bottom-up approaches involve picking up the voices from the field, so even if the measures fail, they can often be applied to other problems. This is just a rule of thumb.
This doesn't mean that bottom-up approaches are always right, but the teachings of the elders should not be taken lightly. There's a clear dead end on the ground, but no limit in the sky.
The problem with building up from the bottom is losing sight of when to stop. And then it becomes a Tower of Babel and incurs the wrath of God (the customer).
So, the best way is to create a ceiling for them.
For beginners, let them start from the bottom. When it takes shape, time it right, ask if they've thought about it from the top. Then give them some plausible advice like, "That won't work," and let them collapse it once. Then let them rebuild it from the ceiling they thought of down to the ground.
In Japan, there's a saying that children who die before their parents are made to pile stones in hell, and just before the tower of stones is completed, a demon comes and knocks it down. It's quite cruel. But sometimes when guiding a newcomer, one has to become this demon.
Tom DeMarco's books are full of such advice, so they're good to read when you're troubled. I recommend "Dancing with BETA" (Editor's note: this is the title of the Japanese translation).
But back to the point, if the HI-MAERF project failed to approach from the top, the next step is from the bottom. Without using suspicious crystals created by extraterrestrial organisms that fell from the sky, solve the problem by developing existing ground warfare weapons.
The equivalent of this is the NATSF, the Navy's Advanced Tactical Fighter program, which started in 1988. Yes, the Navy. The government, concerned about the spread of the results of the SIGN plan, allowed only the Army to use Grey Matter.
Why is the XG-70 an aerial mobile fortress? Its specifications seem more natural to call it an airborne battleship. Of course, it was made by the Army. The Navy had no choice but to approach from the bottom.
But to explain NATSF, one must first explain ATSF, the Advanced Tactical Fighter program. That's the Army. It's better known as the project that developed the F-22.
Isn't ATSF the Army's bottom-side approach? It's not. ATSF was something the Army spat out, told to salvage something from an overly expensive failed project.
However, with the absurd condition of not using Grey Matter, they ended up creating the bizarre weapon, the stealth tactical fighter.
Of course, we'll discuss the F-22. We won't end this talk with "go look it up yourself."
As a newcomer, I still hold a grudge against my instructor who told me to look it up myself, and when I did and confirmed, he said, "Oh, I didn't know that."
But please spare me from discussing the YF-23, which competed in the ATSF. There's almost no information on its development after its non-selection.
To understand the F-22, one must first know what stealth is. The term originated when an Army officer, asked by a reporter about the purpose of the new generation of tactical aircraft, replied, "to sneak into the Hive."
At the time, there was a growing public opinion that facing BETA with existing ground forces was foolish, so this expression was very well-received. As a result, this expression took on a life of its own, leading to the concept of stealth tactical fighter.
This was excellent in terms of gaining taxpayer understanding. However, it also led to various misunderstandings. The most notable one was the misconception that the F-22 was an anti-personnel tactical fighter. Let's take a closer look.
Before being called stealth, ATSF aircraft were described as having low observability. This better helps understand the machine. The Army demanded low observability for the new generation of forces against BETA.
How do BETA identify things? No one knows. It's not optical, not radio waves, not temperature, not sound. However, the research results of Alternative 4 found a correlation with the amount of information.
Prepare two processors in a black box, and have them perform different processes. BETA always attacks the box with the greater amount of processing information.
I have no idea how they found this correlation. But as someone who studied information engineering, it feels as difficult to understand as anything else, so I just accepted it.
In information engineering, there are occasionally people who try to express all the phenomena of this world in probabilities. They are what you call perverts and should be reported immediately. However, maybe BETA's method is the same.
The Army's approach was simple. Just drastically reduce the amount of information emitted. In other words, it's not clear how BETA recognizes things, but anyway, just be quiet, unobtrusive, and not hot.
However, there are some things I don't do. One of them is reducing the radar cross-section. Yes, the thing that everyone thinks the F-22 excels at is actually not done.
Sometimes, in fiction, the F-22 is portrayed as invisible to other tactical machine's radars, but in reality, tactical aircraft don’t carry radars. Tactical fighter, which only deal with ground-crawling BETA, have no use for radars.
Tactical aircraft sensing is primarily done through light and sound. They don’t use radio waves. This is mainly due to the curvature of the Earth, which applies when trying to detect other tactical aircraft.
However, I hope people don't interpret this as a lack of understanding on the author's part. In the context of fiction, it's terribly difficult to develop the plot without assuming the presence of radars. In reality, searching for a lost wingman is tough, but it's not something one wants to see in fiction. Probably they're sensing each other's presence or something.
Sometimes, in public releases, screens that seem to project what tactical officers see from their machines display something like a radar. However, these are tactical data link screens, meant for easily sharing the positions of allies and the general location of BETA, not sensor screens.
Secretly, though, I have been asked to draw radar-like things in publicly released videos. It's what you call disinformation.
The technique of reducing an aircraft's radar cross-section relies on the premise that the aircraft doesn’t change its orientation in the air. It's not applicable to tactical machines with limbs that constantly change their posture relative to the ground.
After all, if you can hide behind terrain undulations, you won't get hit by radar. What's scarier is avoiding laser targeting, which is what tactical machines are meant for.
Then, you might wonder why the F-22 is so pointed in shape. But I don’t know. When I asked my mother, she said it might just be the designer's preference.
What the F-22 really focuses on is its legs. It's famous for spending as much on the rubber of its soles as the previous generation tactical machines did in total, being cautious about the sound made when landing on the ground.
However, the biggest information emitter is heat. But fundamentally reducing it would also reduce power. So, it focuses on the second biggest emitter – sound.
There are also other subtle techniques, like delegating processing-intensive tasks to rear-wing machines to reduce the computation at the front.
One rumor about the F-22 is that its piloting system has a backdoor, allowing it to become optically invisible. I can assert that this is a hoax.
Even if the piloting system were a black box performing hidden processes, it would be immediately noticeable. Just monitor the signal’s entry and exit points.
If there's a process to hide the F-22 from incoming signals, a difference would appear at the exit. Spotting this difference would be the biggest proof of the F-22's existence.
Those who believe this rumor have never attempted mischief. A real villain hides a body in a graveyard, not in the woods, because it won't stand out among others.
An aside, tactical officers are incredibly sensitive to any extra processing on their machines. Day-to-day, these officers are acutely aware of any change. Even a minor increase in processing due to an update would bring a flood of complaints.
If the F-22 were trying to achieve stealth by increasing processing, the tactical officers would be the first to notice, without any need for monitoring software.
Writing about specifics leads to understanding. So, let’s write about how to detect an F-22 with a conventional machine:
1. Swing the tactical machine to the left.
2. Where the F-22 is, there will be a momentary processing delay.
3. If there's a delay, swing the tactical machine to the right.
Repeat steps 1 to 3 to locate the F-22.
Though it seems like a joke, this rumor once saved me. When we received log data about processing delays from the field, we couldn't figure out why. Saying, "Maybe an F-22 passed by," served as a convenient excuse.
Now, why does the Army let such negative rumors persist? The reason is the insidious effectiveness of the F-22's BETA stealth. The Army is conducting detailed verifications of the F-22's stealth. In fact, when alone, the F-22 and F-15 have no difference in detectability by BETA.
As mentioned earlier, BETA attacks the side with more computational activity. Thus, the stealth of the F-22 means that when side by side with an F-15, it's less likely to be attacked.
Therefore, when the F-22 operates, it does so mixed
with non-stealth fighter. A unit solely composed of F-22s has no difference in detectability compared to a unit of conventional fighter.
This is particularly sneaky considering the U.S. keeps its stealth fighter closely guarded. Naturally, there would be a difference in the shoot-down rate when aligned with allied forces. Essentially, the F-22 is truly hiding a body in a graveyard, where the graveyard is the non-stealth fighter units.
However, the F-22 is ideally suited for the role of "Wild Weasel". Though it's only rumored, if non-stealth fighter hold the front line, apparently, even under laser-class targeting, the F-22 won't be attacked if it sneaks right under.
Despite this, the Army is stingy with deploying F-22s. Front-line forces should make more extensive use of stealth fighter.
The stealth of the F-22 is so malignantly effective that it's a relief people are content with the simplistic explanation of backdoors.
Returning to the topic of NATSF, the ATSF, which started as a project to write off budget overruns, ironically ended in developing more budget-consuming stealth fighter. The Navy thought to further utilize this outcome.
That was the genesis of NATSF, the Navy's Advanced Tactical Fighter program. The intended selections were the naval version of the F-22, the F-22N Sea Raptor, and the A-12 Avenger. The Navy planned to use these two models for Hive conquest.
There's nothing additional to explain about the F-22N. In its planning stage, it wasn’t much different from the Army's specifications and ultimately wasn’t adopted. The notable feature lies with the A-12.
The A-12 was to be a large tactical surface attacker, succeeding the A-6 Intruder. While incorporating stealth technology developed in ATSF, the A-12's notable point was its planned mini nuclear reactor.
The main purpose of the A-12 was to resupply the F-22N inside the Hive. It was meant to supply abundant electricity and stored fuel to the F-22N.
Here's the Navy's procedure for Hive conquest:
1. Have the Army attack the Hive from the surface.
2. Sneak into a stub while the Army distracts, using stealth aircraft.
3. Control the main shaft connected to the stub.
4. Resupply forces from "above" the main shaft.
5. Control the exits of each stub from the main shaft.
Indeed, the A-12 was to be humanity's first orbital drop-capable tactical attack machine.
And that was NATSF's approach to Hive conquest, the U.S.'s bottom-up approach.
When this failed, the United States finally shifted its stance to a G-bomb-dominant strategy. Understanding this is key to judging the Japanese Empire's intention to conquer Hives with conventional forces.
But one wonders, is this really the bottom? The most important aspect of both bottom-up and top-down approaches is their starting point. Determining whether this point is the highest or lowest is crucial and challenging.
I run my fingers over the desk. This action is meaningless but serves to interrupt my brain and accelerate thought. The touch of this ordinary office desk is unremarkable, which is why I wanted the feel of good quality paper.
That's it! We're not at the bottom yet. The real bottom is before the BETA came.
In other words, why did humanity start fighting extraterrestrial beings with large bipedal robots? And the real bottom lies in the pre-BETA terrestrial forces against humanity.
I need to explain this.
First, the reason for adopting walking weapons is that one can't fight while laying high-grade roads in the stubs...
July 26, 2014
UN Army Yukon Base, West Office Building, Room 207
Lieutenant Yui Takamura
"Why don't you do your thinking in your own room, Lieutenant Bridges?"
Colonel Iwaya addresses Lieutenant Bridges.
While the UN office staff is explaining, Lieutenant Bridges is clearly lost in thought, his eyes wandering.
The participants on the UN side are staring in surprise. Understandable, as even for a colonel, it's harsh to speak that way to a foreign officer they're meeting for the first time.
However, no one from the Japanese Empire's side seems surprised. All the participants are members of Colonel Iwaya's team. They know the only person he would address that way.
"The Japanese Empire is trying to conquer the Hive using regular procedures."
Surprise runs through the participants from the Japanese Empire. From a completely bureaucratic document, he has discerned the true intent of the Japanese Empire, something completely unexpected and unasked for.
And while overlaying his confirmations over the UN staff's explanation, it becomes clear that he is not just lost in thought but listening to everything. And he can do that thing too.
The thing with his hands. Occasionally seen writing while listening to someone, but what he writes on the paper are just patterns, not words or anything. If asked, he would explain he does it to interrupt his brain, not to write anything down.
Being able to describe every move of a first-time meeting American lieutenant. There's only one reason for that.
He has seen the offspring that bloomed in a distant foreign land. That person's odd behavior was more eccentric than expected. It was discounted because they were family. It's completely eccentric behavior.
After Lieutenant Bridges is cautioned by Colonel Iwaya about how he speaks, he gives a brief explanation and hands over the discussion to the UN staff, only to start drifting off again.
"Lieutenant, I repeat, do your thinking in your own room."
It's not anger. It's because he won't stop doing this all day if not interrupted. That's why it must be stopped.
"なるほど"
An unexpected phrase comes from the lieutenant. Different voice, but the exact same tone and speed of affirmation.
"Lieutenant Bridges, that's... Japanese language."
Colonel Iwaya responds to Lieutenant Bridges in a slightly softer tone.
Probably the work of his mother. She must have ingrained in him to say that when interrupting his thoughts. And it was too perfect.
Unseen by anyone, a single tear rolls down my cheek.
This is the first time seeing Colonel Iwaya's apologetic face in this matter.
The death of the father who committed injustice is forgiven here. The rightful successor with the right stuff has taken over.
If I had put the number of characters into the chinquapin sentiment against the U.S. that the U.S. would never do a dick move to hide behind a back door and be stealthy, it would have taken up more characters than I imagined. Therefore, it is divided into four parts.
Due to the limitations of the author's ability to describe human drama, the human drama of Total Eclipse ends with this story. The rest of the story will be devoted to small stories and poop about this world.
The next story will be about the hive's conventional forces, and the et cetera about the T80 modified air cushion tanks.
And after that, the sixth episode will be F-14J - Imperial City Burning Early Days.