Solarian Military Catchup Attempts

lyonheart wrote:Hi Hutch,

All very true.

It took years to set Bolthole up, more years to start the R&D, more years to get the manufacturing and construction going, all of it [~15-20?] years the SL doesn't have.

Right now it appears they attempting to rely upon the same Sollie corporations they always have, not that they can afford a "Bolthole" even if they've thought of it yet.

Given RFC has stated the SL doesn't have 5 years, I don't think any attempted will get that far by then, and according to the Harrington doctrine, by the time they do, they'll have enemies/targets much nearer home than Manticore to worry about.

L

Yes, but remember one very important thing; no one in the Honorverse knows that. NONE of them know how long the SL has. We readers have meta knowledge no character has access to, so it makes sense that the SL would start crash research projects and probably some secret fleet R&D/construction centers. They can and likely will start them, but only we know most of it won't come to fruition. Given that the SL leadership is finally realizing they have a very real fight on their hands, they will do stuff like that in the plans on them surviving long enough to make use of the research.

And don't forget that the SEM is very concerned that the SL can do it if it succeeds. They have given the SLN a huge incentive to develop better technology. A larghe part of the incentive of the SEM to defeat the SLN asap is that they know that given enough time, even with Manticore's technological edge, the SL has enough brain and man power (no pun intended) to overwhelm the SEM. Only as the GA does the SEM have a solid chance at out-surviving the SL. If the GA cannot break up the SL into small enough pieces, the GA loses.

Hi Zakharra,

All quite true, but the time factor still plays a critical role.

Knowing the SL has the technical capability, the GA will do everything it can to reduce its actual time and ability to do research, to reduce the universe of possibilities to something much more manageable.

In OBS we learned nobody else had developed ECM heads for missiles since they were such a complete surprise to the peep Q ship.

In SoF, FF Admiral Dubroskaya's staff discuss ECM missile heads which they are now familiar with, 22 years after HH-A and the RMN first used them, while they may have used them earlier, no one survived again to tell the tale; NTM neither did the Thunder of God, so it was still a surprise when the war began, so make it 18 years for the SLN to learn about them from the peeps and make their own, though I wonder if they gave credit to the RMN, or let it be known who did it first.

From the textev, evidently not; the FF staff and CO's give no hint they know the RMN developed them first [its quite possible some SDF came up with them much earlier, but hasn't used them yet], reminding me of all the US Army and Navy officers who didn't know where the "Bofors" 40 mm came from, since we got the blueprints from the Brits.

One can't help wondering if the other advances the SLN has shown since 1900 PD are the result of peep data on RMN capabilities, filtered by the MAlign agents etc along the way.

L

Zakharra wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi Hutch,

All very true.

It took years to set Bolthole up, more years to start the R&D, more years to get the manufacturing and construction going, all of it [~15-20?] years the SL doesn't have.

Right now it appears they attempting to rely upon the same Sollie corporations they always have, not that they can afford a "Bolthole" even if they've thought of it yet.

Given RFC has stated the SL doesn't have 5 years, I don't think any attempted will get that far by then, and according to the Harrington doctrine, by the time they do, they'll have enemies/targets much nearer home than Manticore to worry about.

L

Yes, but remember one very important thing; no one in the Honorverse knows that. NONE of them know how long the SL has. We readers have meta knowledge no character has access to, so it makes sense that the SL would start crash research projects and probably some secret fleet R&D/construction centers. They can and likely will start them, but only we know most of it won't come to fruition. Given that the SL leadership is finally realizing they have a very real fight on their hands, they will do stuff like that in the plans on them surviving long enough to make use of the research.

And don't forget that the SEM is very concerned that the SL can do it if it succeeds. They have given the SLN a huge incentive to develop better technology. A larghe part of the incentive of the SEM to defeat the SLN asap is that they know that given enough time, even with Manticore's technological edge, the SL has enough brain and man power (no pun intended) to overwhelm the SEM. Only as the GA does the SEM have a solid chance at out-surviving the SL. If the GA cannot break up the SL into small enough pieces, the GA loses.

In doing catch up R&D, knowing it's possible is about half the battle. Still though, we know the SL won't have time to do very much (but they might come up with a few surprises).

Hi Hutch,

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Leaving the BF reserve in the Sol system untouched would be a definite double plus ungood; since the remaining 2/3 SD's with auto-cannon might be upgraded faster if the ship yards etc are also left NTM nearby system shipyards, all then able to intimidate anyone thinking about leaving the SL and more vulnerable than Beowulf, although there may be fewer SD's left than the ~1230 or so each system would have if they were equally divided, because of those that were already activated by Rajani.

I don't recall anyone suggesting occupying Earth, indeed Terekhov doubts it will ever happen, in bringing the true criminals to justice.

But neutralizing its military capability, as I suggested again, after taking out all the other 'anchorages'?

Most definitely.

L

Hutch wrote:

Zakharra wrote: The GA attacking the Sol system would be an extremely chancy maneuver on the GA's part. It could easily be taken as an attack on the most holy and revered system in the human settled galaxy, and give the Solarian League something to rally around. This is mentioned in a Call to Arms and is something that the GA/SEM military is very cautious about doing because it could backfire spectacularly on the GA/SEM if they did it.

I know that point has been argued/debated in several other threads, but I just have to add that (1) Major fleet bases/repair centers/building slips are located in Sol System along with part of the mothballed fleet, which are valid targets, and (2) Giving the SL a 'free square' where they won't be touched and can do research/rebuilding/commission new ships without the GA doing anything seems to be in the realm of A Bad Idea.

Not attacking or occupying Old Earth--I concur, that would not be a good idea. Taking out the command and control, not to mention the ships and docks in a large raid, like lyonheart suggests? I think it is necessary.

Besides, the only ones (IIRC) who have said again and again in textev that attacking Sol would be a good thing for the SL unity are members of the Mandarins, who haven't been right yet...

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Hi Jonathan_S,

Such intel might be "leaked" by the mandarins in the hope that a GA attack would provoke the backlash they seek.

I strongly doubt that between all the R&D the RMN and RHN have done that they'd be easily fooled, but if I'm right about the elimination of BF in the next month or two, that option won't have time to be seriously developed before the GA attacks anyway.

Given the almost a decade the MAlign has been trying to develop MDM's, I doubt the SL will stumble over the correct solution in 3-4 month's.

OTOH, selling them stuff that won't work, like LAC's armed with TWTSNBN or energy torpedoes forex, might be entertaining and remunerative for certain intel agencies.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:*quote="Weird Harold"*[quote="Hutch"](1) Major fleet bases/repair centers/building slips are located in Sol System along with part of the mothballed fleet, which are valid targets, and (2) Giving the SL a 'free square' where they won't be touched and can do research/rebuilding/commission new ships without the GA doing anything seems to be in the realm of A Bad Idea.*quote*

As long as SLN ships stay in the Sol system, it won't matter to the GA how many or how capable.

The GA's primary concern regarding SLN R&D is the possibility of a "Bolthole" establishment away from the Sol System; Sol System is just to infested with spies from all sources to maintain any sort of secret project there. The GA can just establish a covert blockade of the Sol system to destroy any SLN movement out of the system.

The risk of the SLN developing some war winning tech in the Sol System and building sufficient numbers to be a threat is far less than the risk of an adverse backlash from any perceived attack on "The Cradle of Mankind" (tm).

For that matter, the fact that it seems a bad idea to attack anything in the Sol system now doesn't mean that it will remain a bad idea throughout the war.

As the war goes on public opinion may (and likely will) shift further and further against the Mandrins. As that happens the risk that action in the Sol system will cause a solidification of the League against Manticore should reduce. Further Manticore has time to establish their message, for example to lead people to see some future attack as necessary to force an end to a pointless war and stop the Mandarins from continuing to send more and more formations to their deaths.

For that matter, Manticore might actually get intel that convinced them that the risks of leaving Sol as a safe haven any longer are now higher than the risk an attack will serve as a powerful rallying cry.[/quote]

Lyonheart wrote:

Finding competent people is the easy part. The SL is stuffed full of very competent scientists, techs and workers. The ones that aren't a part of the Malign might be a little harder. But I don't think there are MAlign people in all parts of the government/military/research/commercial aspects of the SL. The more agents in place, the greater the chance of discovery. I'm having a hard enough time believing that the deep cover agents whose families have been in place for many generations and are still loyal to the Malign (it's one aspect of RFC's story that is just more than a little hard to swallow lorewise), but they couldn't have seeded too many agents/lines without vastly increasing the risk of at least some of them not staying loyal to unseen masters.

But I admit it is likely that the MAlign would know about any bolthole (or boltholes) before the GA does. It's also entirely possible that the SLN will be able to have boltholes that remain hidden. They have the room and space in their borders to shotgun multiple R&D centers/systems. And those systems don;t have to have an inhabitable planet on them. A system with several asteroid belts and no habitable worlds could still support a significant construction force.

Hi Lyonheart,

I am reminded of the old saying, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

The difficulty is not that scientists and technicians are unavailable, Lyonheart. They are. What is missing is a clean competent government to do the organizing. These people have been lining their pockets for so long along with patronizing their families and and their buddies that one wonders how they are going to function now that it is important for them to do so. Someone has to provide the framework to put those competent people to work. Will it happen or will the powers that be ride the ship down in flames?

Don

lyonheart wrote:Hi Hutch,

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Leaving the BF reserve in the Sol system untouched would be a definite double plus ungood; since the remaining 2/3 SD's with auto-cannon might be upgraded faster if the ship yards etc are also left NTM nearby system shipyards, all then able to intimidate anyone thinking about leaving the SL and more vulnerable than Beowulf, although there may be fewer SD's left than the ~1230 or so each system would have if they were equally divided, because of those that were already activated by Rajani.

I don't recall anyone suggesting occupying Earth, indeed Terekhov doubts it will ever happen, in bringing the true criminals to justice.

But neutralizing its military capability, as I suggested again, after taking out all the other 'anchorages'?

Most definitely.

L

The reserves pose no threat. Modernizing those obsolete pieces of junk to anything combat capable will be more expensive and take longer than building brand new ships, and the SLN even knows it by now. Kingsford said that their reserve SD's are the wrong ships for this war.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Hutch,

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Leaving the BF reserve in the Sol system untouched would be a definite double plus ungood; since the remaining 2/3 SD's with auto-cannon might be upgraded faster if the ship yards etc are also left NTM nearby system shipyards, all then able to intimidate anyone thinking about leaving the SL and more vulnerable than Beowulf, although there may be fewer SD's left than the ~1230 or so each system would have if they were equally divided, because of those that were already activated by Rajani.

I don't recall anyone suggesting occupying Earth, indeed Terekhov doubts it will ever happen, in bringing the true criminals to justice.

But neutralizing its military capability, as I suggested again, after taking out all the other 'anchorages'?

Most definitely.

L

Well, friend Lyonheart, given the other comments in this thread, I think we're a bit outnumbered and can only fight a holding action until the next book...

But we're correct, of course...

Forget Cronyism, we also know that the SLN is a morass of beaucracy and paperwork. The number of US scientific and military research projects which have disintegrated into a pile of over-scrutinized, over-beaucratized messes is amazing. I've heard of numerous projects where the accountants and project managers outnumber the scientists, engineers and technicians.

Space-x's success is a model of what is wrong with our current system. the ULA partners were forced to design their launchers with the burden of government oversite the entire way - Whereas, Space-x only has paperwork on the finished product. I'm not saying that is the only thing wrong with the ULA business model, but strict govt controls and oversite can condemn a project to Paperwork Perdition.

The SLN with file rooms of ACTUAL PAPER bring this issue to mind. Instead of coddling ideas, they may be caught in analysis paralysis by the navy and never see the light of day - let alone the firing line.

n7axw wrote:

Lyonheart wrote:

Finding competent people is the easy part. The SL is stuffed full of very competent scientists, techs and workers. The ones that aren't a part of the Malign might be a little harder. But I don't think there are MAlign people in all parts of the government/military/research/commercial aspects of the SL. The more agents in place, the greater the chance of discovery. I'm having a hard enough time believing that the deep cover agents whose families have been in place for many generations and are still loyal to the Malign (it's one aspect of RFC's story that is just more than a little hard to swallow lorewise), but they couldn't have seeded too many agents/lines without vastly increasing the risk of at least some of them not staying loyal to unseen masters.

But I admit it is likely that the MAlign would know about any bolthole (or boltholes) before the GA does. It's also entirely possible that the SLN will be able to have boltholes that remain hidden. They have the room and space in their borders to shotgun multiple R&D centers/systems. And those systems don;t have to have an inhabitable planet on them. A system with several asteroid belts and no habitable worlds could still support a significant construction force.

Hi Lyonheart,

I am reminded of the old saying, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

The difficulty is not that scientists and technicians are unavailable, Lyonheart. They are. What is missing is a clean competent government to do the organizing. These people have been lining their pockets for so long along with patronizing their families and and their buddies that one wonders how they are going to function now that it is important for them to do so. Someone has to provide the framework to put those competent people to work. Will it happen or will the powers that be ride the ship down in flames?

Don

lyonheart wrote:Hi Zakharra,

All quite true, but the time factor still plays a critical role.

Knowing the SL has the technical capability, the GA will do everything it can to reduce its actual time and ability to do research, to reduce the universe of possibilities to something much more manageable.

In OBS we learned nobody else had developed ECM heads for missiles since they were such a complete surprise to the peep Q ship.

In SoF, FF Admiral Dubroskaya's staff discuss ECM missile heads which they are now familiar with, 22 years after HH-A and the RMN first used them, while they may have used them earlier, no one survived again to tell the tale; NTM neither did the Thunder of God, so it was still a surprise when the war began, so make it 18 years for the SLN to learn about them from the peeps and make their own, though I wonder if they gave credit to the RMN, or let it be known who did it first.

From the textev, evidently not; the FF staff and CO's give no hint they know the RMN developed them first [its quite possible some SDF came up with them much earlier, but hasn't used them yet], reminding me of all the US Army and Navy officers who didn't know where the "Bofors" 40 mm came from, since we got the blueprints from the Brits.

One can't help wondering if the other advances the SLN has shown since 1900 PD are the result of peep data on RMN capabilities, filtered by the MAlign agents etc along the way.

L

OBS does not say that Manticore was the first to deploy ECM missile heads. All it says is that the Sirius tactical officer did not know what kind of ECM emitter allowed Harrington to hide the launch of one missile behind another. Do you have other evidence that Haven did not have ECM missile heads when the war began? I was under the impression that they did have them, but were surprised how big the gap between theirs and Manticore's was. I had the impression that everyone used ECM heads in 1900.