To: CMDR Evette LaSalle (@DrakeTungsten )
CC: CAPT Drake Tungsten
From: LT Ansha Wind-People
Subj: Fire Control Without EMR/DSP Sensors Success Report.
CMDR LaSalle,
In short, holy moly it worked.
That is the summary I guess, but not the complete story and certainly not professional, so I will try to give you an accurate report for using data as well as my own thoughts.
The use of your telemetry sending range finders controlled by the hands/tentacles/manipulators of our crew, using their own visual acuity to identify, mark, and range sight objects, both friend and foe, was a success. While our range was quite limited, given the magnification/image enhancement/image stabilization capabilities of the range finders at a theoretical maximum of 50 kilometers, though we managed to detect and track at an average distance of 5.63 Km with maximum having been a whopping 15.7Km and the minimum being a .64Km. Not too bad. I’m sure with practice and improvements to the spotting scopes we can increase that.
Average time to lock suffered as expected but not as bad as I was anticipating based on drill performance. Despite the given perception and processing delays of the living operators, we still managed a sight to lock time of 1 minute, 5 seconds, 893 milliseconds, average, with the fastest being a 12 sec, 853 msec, clocked in by ENS T’Jen who’s average was 22 sec, 633 msec, and the slowest being 3 min, 23 sec, 331 msec by Cadet Shanna Baskin. The slowest time occurred as a result of Cadet Baskin being temporarily blinded by a well placed plasma shot at that spotter’s location. Cadet Baskin was able still able to calculate and deliver the telemetry as soon as she could. This, in my mind is completely understandably and does highlight one of the weaknesses inherent in this method.
Though I would like to recognize the whole team, though I have two stand outs.
Cadet Shanna Baskin should be recognized for her dedication to duty. After the plasma hit that lit up the shield in front of her position, she and her alternate, Petty Officer Dalan Mypo, were both temporarily blinded. She stayed on her posts until relief came, and even sighted in three more targets during this time with reduced visual acuity doing all the calculations herself as her PO Mypo was completely blinded, with two of those spots resulting in hits.
Special praise to Ens T’Jen was 100% accurate of her amazingly fast calculations and telemetry reports, which has earned her the nickname “The Sensinator”.
Cadet Baskin and PO Mypo have both made a full recovery by the way.
Fire control accuracy was 63%. Our biggest issue was in leading moving targets and though this is an area we should practice, I am partially to blame. My programming of the routines that were to calculate the firing solutions based on inputs from the crew guided range-finder scopes over compensated for mass/speed/gravitonic drop and far-field effect. I kept the same values for both energy weapons and projectile weapons when I should have lowered the compensation for projectiles, dependent on payload, speed, and lateral movement. I will be correcting this error. I will also discuss with the crew on how we can improve their tracing of moving targets as well.
Final thoughts:
In all, I would call this exercise a success. The numbers I’ve presented are far superior to my “Kentucky Windage” style of manually directing fire in situations like this. I barely noticed we lacked sensors, which was only noticeable concerning the lack of range we normally Mk 16 Arak system. I do not know if you remember but I absent-mindedly said “incoming on sensors” the other day, having received telemetry reports as I normally would have, albeit slower and shorter ranged. I am truly satisfied with this and will begin using this a routine battle station role in the future even when we are not facing down enemy ECM.
Thank you so much for taking this to it’s operational level, and pushing for it to be drilled despite the grumblings from some of the other staff. I will admit, at some point even I was skeptical, even though I had brought up doing drills like this with naked eyeballs and a PADD on a much less robust scale last year. I think the events from the other day have proven its effectiveness where battle conditions are less friendly to electronic sensor systems. I believe this should be something we should push for fleet wide and beyond.
//SIGNED//
LT. Ansha Wind-People
Chief Tactical Officer,
U.S.S. Dragon (NCC-93887-A)
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//ATTACHMENT// Full Telemetry Report 100528.3