It occurred to me that one variation of the jump technology we haven't seen or hasn't been mentioned to my recollection was a jump-capable recon drone. According to Nathan in one of the episodes, FTL recon drones were in use before the Bio-Digital Plague to explore the systems around Sol for habitable planets that were hospitable to humans. So, why not use jump-capable recon drones to explore those same systems for Jung activity? It would eliminate the need for cold-coasting Scouts and Falcons, thus removing the need to expose flight crews to potential risk, and they already have jump-capable com drones that were adapted into jump-capable KKVs. So why not adapt the design into a jump-capable RD? You could sheath it in stealth materials and program it with rudimentary responses in the event its discovered (such as overloading their mini-ZPEDs to self-destruct) or detect something that Alliance Command should know about immediately.
They were used to scout out habitable worlds 1000 years ago. I'm not sure how happy everyone would be about putting the most sought after technology into the hands of a drone and sent straight at the Jung, especially after we have seen how readily the Jung have been able to spy on the Alliance to the point of a) locating and stealing 3 Jump Falcons, and b) crashing the systems of the Scout. at least both of those times people were they're to try and stop them. not so with a scout drone...
I do like the idea of Jump Smart KKV's. Where you jump a drone into a system, when it arrives it cold coasts, picks up target information. When its happy it has a lock, its engines go hot, it then micro jumps in very close to the target hull fry's its jump drive & computer systems everything and smashes into its target. Might be an idea to add a nuke / antimatter core so that they don't need to burn they're engines for such a long time prior to hitting they're target.
I know that the FTL drones were used to scout out world before the Bio-Digital Plague, that's why I mentioned it as an example of what a jump capable scout drone could accomplish. As for your examples... it has never been states in the series to my knowledge exactly how the Jung received their intelligence on the locations of the jump-capable Falcons (though all evidence points to their nanites) and we know it was a nanite-controlled member of Scout Three's crew that sabotaged its systems. In order to circumvent the nanite problem, you restrict the development project and construction of the drones to personnel that who have never come into contact with the nanites (i.e. Corinari and Takaran scientists and engineers). And as I stated, while they're on their missions you program in instructions to either execute an escape jump or self-destruct should they be at risk of imminent detection or capture. As an added bonus, you could even program them to allow the enemy to close in the case of self-destructing to lure the enemy in so that they're destroyed in the same explosion that destroys the drone. Thus eliminating anyone that had a clear, close look at the drone with their sensors.
A jump-capable "smart" KKV could work, though. We know that the Jung have begun making random course and speed changes with their battleships and battle platforms. As you said, you could jump the "smart" KKV into a system, have it close on a battleship or battle platform while using cold jets to adjust its trajectory before reaching an attack range that simultaneously leaves the enemy no time to evade it and enough distance for it to achieve a significant percentage of the speed of light before making the final jump into its target.
Seems like this approaches the jump bomb/missile/mine suggestion I had a while back. Though in that case, remaining undetected and accuracy was highest priority. The general process went as followed:
1. Location the target ship.
2. Jump closer to reduce the distance by say half.
3. Return to step 1 until the ship is close enough that it can only make one more jump before it's light would likely be detected by the target (including perhaps the target's allies) before it could jump again (to prevent detection).
4. Make the final jump to impact the target.
The key benefit of this is that drone only needs to get close enough to trigger the antimatter bomb. So in theory as long as it can change it's direction (for jump drive purposes) quickly, the use of the jump drive should allow it to easily hit a target that would prove too difficult for a JKKV especially if a similar class as say a Falcon.
The downsides are:
- It seems rather difficult to effectively defend against them unless the Jung steal some key technology from the Alliance or make solid detection grids around ships which could be resource intensive. Specifically, jump drives and/or ZPMs. So it might be too effective, as the best strategy seems to go to FTL as soon as one is found. However, as shown in book 14, a ship can be knocked out of FTL, and it seems likely that the AM bombs could provide this capability (Though it would require more bombs).
- Antimatter bombs seem somewhat less effective than JKKV in terms of damage ability. For the asteroid ships (can't think of the name right now 🙁 ), an AM bomb is probably only enough to blow a big chunk out of it. Though back to the previous issue, it would be a fair bit easier to ensure multiple hits.
The downsides really might just mean that the AM bombs may be deployed in groups to ensure enemy ships are destroyed and don't get away.
