On the Protection of Trade

The ex-SLN and Trade Protection thread having become rather interestingly diverted into training, I thought a trade protection thread might be interesting.

Trade Protection Fundamentals

The major conceptual breakthough of 1916 was that "ships exist to carry cargo".

Sound's silly, doesn't it? However, it really was a major breakthough, because if ships exist to carry cargo, then what matters if not ships/tonnage sunk (permanent carrying capacity loss) or damaged (sequestered carrying capacity loss), but the carrying capacity of the trading system, which includes the ports, landside distribution systems and the entire related infrastructure. It also means the metric of success or failure is not merships lost or enemy warships destroyed, but cargo delivered through the port landside transport systems.

In the 'Honorverse' milieu, this means that the target is not enemy merships per se, but the essential import programme of their most important industrial economies.

There are three major trade protection strategies in descending order of importance.

1. Evasive Routeing. The aim of this is to reduce target density from the raider's perspective by dispersing shipping as far as possible. In the Honorverse, 'normal hyperspace' fills this function well. Evasive routing historically costs ~10% of carrying capacity as it lengthens voyage times. In the Honorverse, it may cost a lot more, depending on route.

2. Convoy. Used in high threat areas where shipping cannot feasibly be dispersed. The dangerous shipping concentrations (analogous to what is incorrectly termed SLOCs) are the gravity wave routes. Convoy costs 10-15% of carrying capacity as it imposes a boom-bust cycle on ports.

3. DAMS and DEMS. Defensive Arming of Merchant Ships arms ships sufficiently that they can drive off the smallest, weakest enemy raiders. Probably not feasible in Honorverse except in very special circumstances. Defensive Equipping of Merchant Ships is different to DAMS even when it includes arming the ship. DEMS fits the mership to be capable of operating in convoy. Again, in the Honorverse, merships appear to be fully capable of this when in normal service.

Numbers and cost

What matters in trade protection is numbers and low cost. Classic naval strategy on trade protection (Sir Julian Corbett being a better example than Alfred Thayer Mahan) notes that the main fleet acts to mask the enemy’s main fleet, preventing it from getting at the numerous but highly dispersed and individually weak trade protection warships.

So this comment is exactly right:

You might get short term advantage if you have recent production or upgrade FF DD/CL/CAs in good condition and can use them to upgrade some of the SDFs in the SEM's Talbott Quadrant (or Silesia) forces.

Based on what seems to come through from the books, many of the SDF's that have anything beyond LACs have some variation of SLN tech ships. They may be really old surplus, built by SLN contractors under license for other clients or buiilt in places like Chalice using licensed plans and equipment. So they may or may not use the same equipment and missiles , just older versions. If so, you may be able to upgrade your SDF by replacing a DD with a former, newer FF DD, etc. That is a short term fix. What you really want to do is bring the SDF of the various systems in both Talbott and Silesia up to training in modern SEM equipment and put them in SEM ships.

it's right because the individual quality of each trade protection warship is actually less important that sheer numbers of the things. Translation - obsolescent front line warships are effective trade protection vessels, especially as they do not require first-class crews.

So are the points which follow from it.

Now let us look at what the word ‘cost’ means. If I can use an obsolescent ship to achieve the same trade protection effect as a more modern ship, then how do we measure comparative costs? Let me use a WWI example. The RN used its obsolete armoured cruisers and battleships to escort troop convoys. If they had not existed, to obtain the same level of protection, modern BB and BC would have had to have been used. This would have been at higher strategic, operational and monetary cost. These ships had a vital strategic role in Grand Fleet (the old ships had no value for Grand Fleet), and a high operational value in the main theatre of war (the old ships had little to no value in that theatre) and the modern ships had to have the most skilled, youngest and best trained men (the old ships could perform their trade protection mission with second and third tier personnel in terms of age, training and quality).

Some trade protection in high threat areas MUST be done by ‘fleet units’, normally the second-tier modern units: in WWII County class CA, Leander class CL etc. But most did not. Two older ships with second-class crews were preferable to one modern one with a first class crew.

Numbers normally trump quality in importance in trade protection. And those numbers are very useful as training pipelines, too. It’s where you confirm that personnel are good enough to advance to better, more modern ships. Again, this was a standard RN practise all through their history.

Now look at manpower costs between non-symmetrical economies. A first-class person is MORE valuable in relative terms in a low-end economy but cheaper in absolute terms relative to the same person in a high-end economy. It’s why there’s a brain drain from third-world countries into first world countries. But this cuts the other way too, you can hire a whale of a lot of poorly skilled people in a low-end economy for less money that for a few skilled people in a high-end economy.

In trade protection terms, that means that you can afford a lot more low-end trade protection ships manned by second tier crews with lower-grade training while these same ships simultaneously 'prove' your higher quality personnel for further training. And numbers really count in trade protection. The trade-offs are too obvious to mention, but it does mean you can get the numbers of ships you need while relieving your first class units of secondary trade protection jobs (noting the caveats above).

In turn, that mass of cheap, second and third class units manned by poorly skilled personnel represents a major training advantage IF you are expanding your forces rapidly. And it does not affect morale, either, for they know it’s a training ground, know they’ll move beyond it if they are good enough and know that its relatively low-risk one too.

These are not ships/men exposed to front-line risks. So to use the most extreme possible example from the other thread - would I use even unrefitted obsolete SLN SD’s with giant crews as trade protection cruisers? Sure, but that's got conditions. I'd only do so if I had to absorb an excessively large flow of low/medium-skill level products of my training system and simultaneously was very short of command teams.

Numbers really count here, I’d prefer to use those people at that point in their training in 2 obsolete ex-RMN SD’s, 3 obsolete DN’s would be better, 5 obsolete ex-Haven BB’s better yet, 6 obsolete BC… you get my drift.

Also note that I will have huge problems providing the command teams for the more numerous ships. This was a near-intractable problem for the RN in WWI and WWII. With the one old SLN SD, I only need one command team. So if I only have one command team for my 5000 medium skilled trainees, I might just have very few choices as to what ship they man!

Kindly note that this ‘medium-skilled personnel’ trade protection layer is one training layer up from basic training.

Cheers: Mark

Using the SLN ships makes sense if you were dealing with run-of-the-mill threats. It doesn't make sense when you're up against the Solarian League who is about to throw their hordes of cruisers and destroyers into commerce raiding. A few tin cans or a single BC is not going to matter when confronted with 1-3 squadrons of SLN raiders. The Alliance is not interested in throwing away the lives of spacers - even partially trained ones - in obsolete death traps. Since there's no way to even get within shouting distance of numerical equality, it must be made up through qualitative superiority. David has already made his position clear about system and merchant defense:

* Seed all the systems with LAC bases and system defense pods
* Provide a few light hyper capable warships or dispatch boats to run for help if something major comes in
* Keep heavy combat forces in nodal positions in order to concentrate combat capability
* Deploy light warships to cover convoys, and (at a future date) develop and deploy "spliced in" LAC hangers for merchant vessels

marklbailey wrote:
1. Evasive Routeing. The aim of this is to reduce target density from the raider's perspective by dispersing shipping as far as possible. In the Honorverse, 'normal hyperspace' fills this function well. Evasive routing historically costs ~10% of carrying capacity as it lengthens voyage times. In the Honorverse, it may cost a lot more, depending on route.

I think
you're drastically underestimating the effectiveness of hyperspace in hiding transits. Basically, unless they're going through a slow speed choke point (Selkir Rift) or you're intel captured their routing and timetable you have near zero chance of detecting (much less intercepting) ships routed normally through hyper.

For all practical purposes ships can only be located and attacked within the equivalent of, say, 100 miles of a port. (Within the hyper limit of a system)
So focusing on deep ocean escorts (hyper capable warships) is overkill for most trade protection because swarms of cheap torpedo boats and sub chasers; backed by shore batteries are plenty to secure that 100ish mile danger zone around your ports.

(This theory breaks down some once you stop moving cargo between your own ports and start trying to trade with the hinterlands who can't, or won't, secure even the seas immediately around their own ports - that's why Manticore was using hyper capable warships for trade protection in Silesia)

Given the above, "Evasive routing" in the honorverse is more about where on the hyper limit you're making your transition. When entering a secure system like Manticore or when travelling under escort, a trader will likely opt to make translation on a point on the limit as close as possible to his destination. When entering an unsecure system, a trader has a literally unimaginably large sphere to play with; any pirate who wants to intercept him will have to be fast enough to get on an intercept vector before the trader reaches the port.
Any slight delay resulting from this (and it is a really slight delay: something on the order of hours) is acceptable. After all, because of the inherent delays in interstellar communication, it is impractical to book docking slots in advance with a high degree of precision (and the sort of system that has a pirate problem likely doesn't see that much traffic per day).

The best known piece of Lend-Lease in WW II was the US trading 50 old DDs to Britain for bases and other things. That gave Britain 50 light but effective anti-submarine units to use with the convoys. You need to think about what these ships were compaired to what was a new/modern DD at the time. They were smaller. They had old (though functional) power plants, they had 4" (it varried) guns as primary armament along with torpedoes plus lighter weapons. The guns were open on the decks, NOT in turrets. They eneded up being fitted with depth charges.
These could deal with subs on the surface and -depending on what equipment at what time- delt ok with subs underwater. The important point was that they could drive off or sink subs plus interfere with subs getting into positions to attack. They could also engage surface raiders- perhaps not actual warships, but Q-ships. Torpedoes do provide quite an advantage. They were wet, they were cold in the North Atlantic. While finding a sub before it attacked -from submerged position - was difficult, they could certainly give said sub a difficult time if not kill it once it was spotted. Not that this would be much comfort to the crew of a freighter sunk in the original attack, but once engaged by a DD, the sub wasn't going to be going after other ships in a convoy.

Isn't going to do anything much against something like the Prinze Eugen but submarines it could kill or- possibly more important- keep from getting a shot at ships in a convoy. Get the cargo though.

It could be somewhat coldblooded thinking but this type of use for other-than-1st-line ships also provides training for the officers as well. Not that much different than giving a Honorverse officer/reserve officer a DD in non-wartime and sending them out on anti-piracy patrol. They have to learn somehow. The ones that survive (along with their crews) move up.

No, a single former FF DD in service with a former Talbott SDF crew isn't probably going to survive against multiple FF/BF warships, but against garden variety pirates- and that is the primary intent with the posting of warships and LACs in the systems- it should do just fine, especialy if it is only to convince said pirates that it isn't a healthy place to be and they just leave without causing any problems.

My wife's grandfather served in the Navy in WW I and lastly about USS Hopewill DD 181. Ship was decommission in 1922 but later included in the Lend-Lease transfer and ultimately (having been transfered from Britian to Norway) was torpedoed on convoy duty for the Med.

Jonathan_S wrote:

marklbailey wrote:
1. Evasive Routeing. The aim of this is to reduce target density from the raider's perspective by dispersing shipping as far as possible. In the Honorverse, 'normal hyperspace' fills this function well. Evasive routing historically costs ~10% of carrying capacity as it lengthens voyage times. In the Honorverse, it may cost a lot more, depending on route.

I think
you're drastically underestimating the effectiveness of hyperspace in hiding transits. Basically, unless they're going through a slow speed choke point (Selkir Rift) or you're intel captured their routing and timetable you have near zero chance of detecting (much less intercepting) ships routed normally through hyper.

For all practical purposes ships can only be located and attacked within the equivalent of, say, 100 miles of a port. (Within the hyper limit of a system)
So focusing on deep ocean escorts (hyper capable warships) is overkill for most trade protection because swarms of cheap torpedo boats and sub chasers; backed by shore batteries are plenty to secure that 100ish mile danger zone around your ports.

(This theory breaks down some once you stop moving cargo between your own ports and start trying to trade with the hinterlands who can't, or won't, secure even the seas immediately around their own ports - that's why Manticore was using hyper capable warships for trade protection in Silesia)

The relative inability of intercept in grav waves is the reason why there are no grav wave optimized escorts. Such an escort would have bubble sidewalls, armor on all sides (including top and bottom) and no or few missile weapons or defenses, which are useless in grav waves, and navies would be researching impeller sail missiles.

Essentially, all Honorverse ships are built for Mediterrean or Baltic sea conditions, not true Bluewater conditions like would be found deep in the N. Atlantic, with LACs being the equivalent of Brownwater or littoral missile/gunboats.

marklbailey wrote:it's right because the individual quality of each trade protection warship is actually less important that sheer numbers of the things. Translation - obsolescent front line warships are effective trade protection vessels, especially as they do not require first-class crews.

The best example for the Honorverse is the mission of RMN BCs. They were designed to launch long-range independent or squadron-scale raids. When it came to time to do this in the 1st war it all fell apart. The BCs ran into obsolescent peep BBs and got their asses kicked.

Brigade XO wrote:The best known piece of Lend-Lease in WW II was the US trading 50 old DDs to Britain for bases and other things. That gave Britain 50 light but effective anti-submarine units to use with the convoys. You need to think about what these ships were compaired to what was a new/modern DD at the time. They were smaller. They had old (though functional) power plants, they had 4" (it varried) guns as primary armament along with torpedoes plus lighter weapons. The guns were open on the decks, NOT in turrets. They eneded up being fitted with depth charges.
These could deal with subs on the surface and -depending on what equipment at what time- delt ok with subs underwater. The important point was that they could drive off or sink subs plus interfere with subs getting into positions to attack. They could also engage surface raiders- perhaps not actual warships, but Q-ships. Torpedoes do provide quite an advantage. They were wet, they were cold in the North Atlantic. While finding a sub before it attacked -from submerged position - was difficult, they could certainly give said sub a difficult time if not kill it once it was spotted. Not that this would be much comfort to the crew of a freighter sunk in the original attack, but once engaged by a DD, the sub wasn't going to be going after other ships in a convoy.

Isn't going to do anything much against something like the Prinze Eugen but submarines it could kill or- possibly more important- keep from getting a shot at ships in a convoy. Get the cargo though.

It could be somewhat coldblooded thinking but this type of use for other-than-1st-line ships also provides training for the officers as well. Not that much different than giving a Honorverse officer/reserve officer a DD in non-wartime and sending them out on anti-piracy patrol. They have to learn somehow. The ones that survive (along with their crews) move up.

No, a single former FF DD in service with a former Talbott SDF crew isn't probably going to survive against multiple FF/BF warships, but against garden variety pirates- and that is the primary intent with the posting of warships and LACs in the systems- it should do just fine, especialy if it is only to convince said pirates that it isn't a healthy place to be and they just leave without causing any problems.

My wife's grandfather served in the Navy in WW I and lastly about USS Hopewill DD 181. Ship was decommission in 1922 but later included in the Lend-Lease transfer and ultimately (having been transfered from Britian to Norway) was torpedoed on convoy duty for the Med.

Brigade XO, what your mentioning seems a little different than the usual TQ proposal. Instead of "replacement" of the SDFs, it appears you are proposing "augmenting" them.

So, if Rembrant has reserve personel they can call up - here's an extra DD to man. Got extra personnel in Uniform - here's a CL if you want it. Want to expand the local boot graduating class - take another.

That wouldn't be a quadrant level decision, but a planetary one, as long as the quadrant govt. allows the disposal that way. We havn't seen it happen yet, but a lot is happening off camera.

The long term question is how much local autonomy will the SDFs have long term (or now according to the Quadrant Charter) and do they still have the autonomy to make said requests now, or are they supposed to follow a pre-set line to form a consistant "quadrant guard" (less likely) or join the mainline RMN (most likely from David's comments).

If you really want to go really cold blood go the liberty ship route. Have your civilian yards mass produce a very basic tech freighter design in numbers faster then can be destroyed by the raiders.

Brigade XO wrote:The best known piece of Lend-Lease in WW II was the US trading 50 old DDs to Britain for bases and other things. That gave Britain 50 light but effective anti-submarine units to use with the convoys. You need to think about what these ships were compaired to what was a new/modern DD at the time. They were smaller. They had old (though functional) power plants, they had 4" (it varried) guns as primary armament along with torpedoes plus lighter weapons. The guns were open on the decks, NOT in turrets. They eneded up being fitted with depth charges.
These could deal with subs on the surface and -depending on what equipment at what time- delt ok with subs underwater. The important point was that they could drive off or sink subs plus interfere with subs getting into positions to attack. They could also engage surface raiders- perhaps not actual warships, but Q-ships. Torpedoes do provide quite an advantage. They were wet, they were cold in the North Atlantic. While finding a sub before it attacked -from submerged position - was difficult, they could certainly give said sub a difficult time if not kill it once it was spotted. Not that this would be much comfort to the crew of a freighter sunk in the original attack, but once engaged by a DD, the sub wasn't going to be going after other ships in a convoy.

Isn't going to do anything much against something like the Prinze Eugen but submarines it could kill or- possibly more important- keep from getting a shot at ships in a convoy. Get the cargo though.

Actually while they'd most likely lose a head to head fight against a big CA like Prinze Eugen the torpedoes were a great deterrent. Even fairly light convoy escorts were sometimes capable of keeping heavy units at bay by laying down smokescreens and threatening torpedo attacks if they closed.

Damage that even slowed a North Atlantic raider would make it's ultimate interception and destruction by heavier RN units (between it and it's home base) far likelier.