The Grand Alliance Grand Attack

Zakharra wrote: Edit: to Relax, the RHN isn't in any real condition to be raiding SL space anymore than the RMN is. They lost a huge chunk of their fleet in First Manticore. And it was a larger percentage than the SL lost in Second Manticore. The SLN had far greater reserves while the RHN sent practically all of its fleet in one massive attack except for the Home Fleet. The Republic doesn't have that many ships to spare yet until more come out of the slipways of the shipyards.

Plus the RHN formed fleets without the ability to move proven commanders and officers up a level due to BoM, so their operational capability is going to seriously suck. Assume the entire US pacific fleet and half the Atlantic fleet was obliterated at Pearl Harbor with no survivors. The next week a replacement fleet of the same size was delivered from the builders. How exactly will the USN man it? How effective is it going to be in combat if you commit it the week after next? How about the month after next?

That's the RHN situation.

Zakharra wrote: Edit: to Relax, the RHN isn't in any real condition to be raiding SL space anymore than the RMN is. They lost a huge chunk of their fleet in First Manticore. And it was a larger percentage than the SL lost in Second Manticore. The SLN had far greater reserves while the RHN sent practically all of its fleet in one massive attack except for the Home Fleet. The Republic doesn't have that many ships to spare yet until more come out of the slipways of the shipyards.

I am not sure that I can agree with you on that. Per War of Honor, chapter 50:

"Maybe even worse than that, though, Pat has been engaged in a massive reevaluation of ONI's files, cross-indexed with information Greg Paxton has made available, and she's come up with some possible ballpark figures for what the Peeps may still have in reserve. I'm inclined to think that she's probably overestimating their capabilities, which would be a natural enough reaction to how badly we were surprised by what they hit us with. On the other hand, I've seen her basic analysis, and it certainly doesn't seem to me that she's being alarmist in the way she approaches it. So it may be that she's right. But if she is, then the [iPeeps have a minimum of another three hundred of the wall currently under construction.[/i] A minimum, Honor. That's at a time when Grayson has just under a hundred SD(P)s, and we're all the way up to seventy-three. Since we seem to have observed damned close to two hundred of them in action exclusive of the ones they sent to Sidemore, we're looking at what might conservatively be called an unfavorable balance of forces."

So that's at least 500 SD(P)'s. Per At All Costs, Haven lost 319SD's, 251 Destroyed and 68 Captured (the captured ones have been returned per ART), RFC also writes in Chapter 69 of AAC...

No one in history had ever seen a battle like it, and it ought to have been decisive. The walls of battle of both the Alliance and the Republic had been gutted. Yet despite Haven's horrific losses, the loss ratio was actually in the Republic's favor in hulls, and hugely so in terms of loss of life. Had it not been for the existence of Apollo—deployed so far only aboard Honor's ships—at this moment, no power in the universe could have prevented the Republic of Haven's remaining SD(P)s from rolling right over the Manticoran home system.

Italics are mine.

And we know they have 200+ SD(P)'s that they could deploy against Filareta while still maintaining a Home Fleet and other stations.

So I think (lyonheart has done a lot of the calculations on this) that they do still have a considerable number of SD(P)'s and many more coming off the line.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Draken wrote:

kzt wrote:You want a war to the knife, that is an excellent way to get the 3 billion people of manticore against to 30 trillion or so people in the the SL in a fight to the death.

Second: How long? If we will have +/- 300-400 SD(P) and 200-300 BC and CLAC, it shouldn't take long. Manticore in the Second war was able to hit 3-4 targets at the same time, here we should be able to hit maybe 20 or even more.
Third: What is my target? I want to accomplish same effect as American attacks on German industry in 1941-1945, one major criteria of choosing targets was importance of them and another one was, how much it will anger Hitler and he will order Luftwaffe to protect that region and we could strike in other place. Also I want to destroy morale of League citizens, richer worlds or more endangered quickly will change sides, so they don't be a target. It's attrition type warfare but we must cripple as fast as possible League shipyards and other branches of industry. If they don't have shipyards, they don't have ships and if they don't have ships, they must play as we want. Kingsford said that all of their reserve is junk, but if we destroy it they won't get material from it.

Yes, but in WWII we weren't worried about the vastly German reserves of manpower and economic muscle coming back for a grudge match against the US in a few decades. Manticore has very good reasons not to get the majority of the current citizens of the League massively and long term pissed off and wanting revenge.

Second if WWII showed us anything it's that destroying infrastructure doesn't destroy moral, not even massive non-nuclear bombing of cities did that. It hardens resolved and generates desire for retaliation and revenge, by and large it doesn't engender feelings of hopelessness and surrender.

So I really wouldn't want to be blowing anything up for the primary purpose of demoralizing the enemy - it's way too likely to backfire. And long term if the vast latent power of the League gets and remains focused on destroying the GA for its actions the GA doesn't have to manpower to prevent the League from rising again (and exploiting their current military edge in an attempt to prevent the industrial and military buildup from occurring is most likely just going to make the League planets involved more determined to persevere for the long haul until they can avenge these insults and destruction)

Hutch wrote:

Zakharra wrote: Edit: to Relax, the RHN isn't in any real condition to be raiding SL space anymore than the RMN is. They lost a huge chunk of their fleet in First Manticore. And it was a larger percentage than the SL lost in Second Manticore. The SLN had far greater reserves while the RHN sent practically all of its fleet in one massive attack except for the Home Fleet. The Republic doesn't have that many ships to spare yet until more come out of the slipways of the shipyards.

I am not sure that I can agree with you on that. Per War of Honor, chapter 50:

"Maybe even worse than that, though, Pat has been engaged in a massive reevaluation of ONI's files, cross-indexed with information Greg Paxton has made available, and she's come up with some possible ballpark figures for what the Peeps may still have in reserve. I'm inclined to think that she's probably overestimating their capabilities, which would be a natural enough reaction to how badly we were surprised by what they hit us with. On the other hand, I've seen her basic analysis, and it certainly doesn't seem to me that she's being alarmist in the way she approaches it. So it may be that she's right. But if she is, then the [iPeeps have a minimum of another three hundred of the wall currently under construction.[/i] A minimum, Honor. That's at a time when Grayson has just under a hundred SD(P)s, and we're all the way up to seventy-three. Since we seem to have observed damned close to two hundred of them in action exclusive of the ones they sent to Sidemore, we're looking at what might conservatively be called an unfavorable balance of forces."

So that's at least 500 SD(P)'s. Per At All Costs, Haven lost 319SD's, 251 Destroyed and 68 Captured (the captured ones have been returned per ART), RFC also writes in Chapter 69 of AAC...

No one in history had ever seen a battle like it, and it ought to have been decisive. The walls of battle of both the Alliance and the Republic had been gutted. Yet despite Haven's horrific losses, the loss ratio was actually in the Republic's favor in hulls, and hugely so in terms of loss of life. Had it not been for the existence of Apollo—deployed so far only aboard Honor's ships—at this moment, no power in the universe could have prevented the Republic of Haven's remaining SD(P)s from rolling right over the Manticoran home system.

Italics are mine.

And we know they have 200+ SD(P)'s that they could deploy against Filareta while still maintaining a Home Fleet and other stations.

So I think (lyonheart has done a lot of the calculations on this) that they do still have a considerable number of SD(P)'s and many more coming off the line.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Oh. Thanks for the info dump, Hutch. I can see that. I didn't know if Manticore had returned the captured RHN ships or just scrapped them. Thanks for clearing that up. I had known about the ships in the Haven yards, but forgot about them. Still it takes time to get the crews trained and to make sure the ships work as intended (proving trials and such). It's still a fact that RHN took a huge loss that's not easily regained. Especially in trained crewmen/women. I would say that the RHN could go on raids easier than the RMN could, having more ships, but at the same time, they actually stand a better chance of getting hurt as well. They have even more systems to cover than the SEM does (if they become a target of commerce raiders) and the SLN is closer to their tech level than they are to Manticore's. With the Cataphrate missiles are a significant step up from the normal SLN ones.

Would the RHN win? Most likely, but they would also take some casualties as it would be easier for the SLN to match the RHN military edge than the SEMs. Apollo and the goodies with it gives the SEM an unbeatable edge. For now.

I really don't know where I am going with this, but...

It is interesting to note that, at the moment, the galaxy's pre-imminent experts on guarding a stellar frontier and volume from raiding are...

the Republic of Haven Navy.


dreamrider

While fighting with Sollies in 99/100 battles we will be fighting against idiots. They can't do same type of trap, as Haven did, cus they don't have any long range missiles and if they will try that, they fleet will be dead in few minutes.
We have two forward bases inside the League, Lynx and Beowulf. Beowulf is very close to Sol and Lynx to the Mesa. Another good base will be Erevhon, it's relatively close to the core, so they shouldn't waste a lot of time travelling in hyper.

Draken wrote:While fighting with Sollies in 99/100 battles we will be fighting against idiots. They can't do same type of trap, as Haven did, cus they don't have any long range missiles and if they will try that, they fleet will be dead in few minutes.
We have two forward bases inside the League, Lynx and Beowulf. Beowulf is very close to Sol and Lynx to the Mesa. Another good base will be Erevhon, it's relatively close to the core, so they shouldn't waste a lot of time travelling in hyper.

The odds are pretty good that someone with roughly the same tech level and 1000 times more researchers and scientists can duplicate your general tech in short order.

As someone once said "I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success"

Grand Alliance Grand Attack

Availability 6months-year past Oyster Bay:
RHN logistics and missile supply. RMN/GSN do not. Therefore RMN units by and large will be limited to only the hard targets or eliminated altogether.

*** Originally planned, home forces needed. Never bothered. First started by looking at what is needed to destroy SLN force. Laughably small number of ships and time required. No one will even know they were gone. ***

RHN at 2nd BOMA had 250+CLAC’s available with reserve.
RHN by this time has Morirarity deployed to all major points and at minimum missile pods in depth at minor planets. RHN units are free for attacking outside reserve nodal points. Givens figured RHN had 1200 SDP building. Lost 240. Deployed 250 at 2nd BOMA indicates 500-800 at minimum 1000 maximum(I think many are still building) are, by the time any offensive gets started, available for offensive/defensive operations.

RHN light units are limited to SDM and while there are quite a few available, I think there are fewer than expected if one went by the ratio shown in the 1920 Fleet Strength chart as Haven was peddle to the meddle building SDP, CLAC, LAC. Likewise RHN knew about ERM. Anyways, RHN units can still haul Lots of pods making them easily up to the task of whipping any FF nodal points with BC’s.

RMN has around 300 SDP at most. GSN has around 200. Both System defense networks are A-OK. GSN/RMN have another 150-200 BCP. Optimally suited for destroying ISLN nodal points. BCL are tied up elsewhere. If RMN/GSN wanted to use their reserve in pods with onboard tractors, they could use their available light units BC/CA etc to easily eliminate FF nodal points.

Both have plenty of Fast ammo carriers.

SL: ISLN: SDF
Optimally ISLN nodal forces are the targets, not the SDF’s.
1800 SL worlds. Per SftS we know Crandall’s force was larger than 95% of the HV entire naval force. Leaves ~100 real navies; we know of the #2,3,4,5 navies by tonnage. Remember Crandall was heavy on SD and light on light units. A normal SDF would have fewer SD and more small fry. We also know there are roughly two dozen building yards in the SL. We also know that there are roughly 6-12 bases where mothballed ISLN ships are stored. We can assume that heavy active forces are stationed at these points. It would not surprise me at all if the 24 major building centers are also the major naval nodes.

BF major nodal force points needing eliminated: Roughly 25
Guesstimated 2000 active SLN SD and ??? SLN BC’s. Guess 2000.
Total # missiles needed to kill 2000 active SLN SD and 2000 SLN BC
SLN SD = 200 RHN capital missiles
SLN BC = 100 RHN capital missiles
2000*200 + 2000*100 = 2000*300 = 600,000 missiles
How many surrender before destruction saving missiles???

OFS major nodal force points needing eliminated: ??? Guess 100
OFS nodal point = 20 worlds? Or 2000 protectorates?
Largest ship BC. Lets just assume they are part of the 2000 BC stated up above to make our life simple. What we will not ignore in this analysis is the transit time required to achieve destruction in 6 months.

******************************************************
Strat: Attack all SLN forces, leave SDF’s unless they choose to fight. Communicate this to all SL governments, telling them, “No, we do not personally hold your world responsible, for the action of a clique of unelected bureaucrats, but we do reserve the right to defend our selves by eliminating the dagger aimed our way by this cabal.”
******************************************************

From MWHJ, SL BF 25 major nodal points is roughly 1 week on average of transit time.

Assume each task force takes out 4 successive Nodal points. Need roughly 6 Task forces each able to carry roughly 100,000 missiles. Say, one task force are RMN/GSN and the rest are RHN. Far more likely are those SLN 2000SD and 2000BC are housed in maybe 10 major nodal points, making the other 15 or so points mop up duty.

Anyways 6 task forces with 100,000 missiles internal + ammo carriers.

RHN SDP: 500 pods x 10 missiles/pod = 20 SDP required per task force. RHN toodles around in 8 SDP/Squadron so make it 24 for redundancy. If all RHN units, this is only ~150 SDP + CLAC, DD’s, Ammo carriers.

In short, If Haven were willing to deploy the same number of SD’P to the SL as it deployed to BOMA 2, 12 task forces with 100,000 missiles, the entire “battle” would entail, 2 weeks of transit time from Haven on average for the 1st 12 targets followed by a day of collanderizing, followed by another week of transit to the other nodal points, followed by a day of collanderizing, followed by 2-3 weeks of traveling home.

RHN, by itself with only 250 SDP+ ammo carriers(not necessarily needed) could completely eliminate all ISLN, SD/BC in a mere 5 weeks.

The title for this thread needs to be changed to:

The Grand Alliance Grand Month Massacre

Do we really need to even bother with the FF “nodal points” as “problem children” requiring an attack "plan"? No. Show up, take names, prepare a smoothie, go home.

Let the follow on diplomats, etc start swarming, backed up by light task forces for a show of force.

PS. Avoid Earth
PPS. Was going to go with the home defense stuff, but honestly it is a waste of electrons to even bother contemplating as the only ships worth worrying about are light units.

kzt wrote:

Draken wrote:While fighting with Sollies in 99/100 battles we will be fighting against idiots. They can't do same type of trap, as Haven did, cus they don't have any long range missiles and if they will try that, they fleet will be dead in few minutes.
We have two forward bases inside the League, Lynx and Beowulf. Beowulf is very close to Sol and Lynx to the Mesa. Another good base will be Erevhon, it's relatively close to the core, so they shouldn't waste a lot of time travelling in hyper.

The odds are pretty good that someone with roughly the same tech level and 1000 times more researchers and scientists can duplicate your general tech in short order.

As someone once said "I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success"

The SLN would need to
(1) accept the tech disparity, which it is nearly done doing,
(2) develop or ape doctrine for using it, a practice for which it has no institutional experience,
(3) develop the FTL communications, tiny fusion plants, hollow-core podlayers, (probably) modern LAC's, Grayson-derived inertial compensators or their equivalent, specialized EW missiles, and FTL telemetry - and I'm sure I'm still missing something,
(4) design the ships to use all of that, or figure out how to do much of it with mere refits of existing ships,
(5) find, recruit, and train the crews for new builds and the Reserve Fleet (if it's something they could use or refit usefully, a very optimistic assumption)
(6) build/refit the ships - and note the SD(P)'s run around two years' build time (maybe, maybe they could go with smaller, more vulnerable pod-layers if they have MDM's from pods and support them with refitted wallers and hypothetical screen units with awesome point defense and shave a few months off that, for a clunky, vulnerable arrangement)
and (7) go win.

6 months will not do it. 12 months will not do it. 36 months and a few miracles would do it. The SLN does not have 36 months and I don't think it's got miracles coming. The Solarian League isn't going to be conquered in 36 months, but it's not going to remain a League for 36 months.

It's never been a star nation - it's a treaty organization that's been able to pretend it's a star nation for sheer size against the outside and for resting so very lightly on its members on the inside. The GA isn't honoring that bluff anymore, and in response, it's not going to be able to remain light on its members - who have started leaving the party. (Heck, the MA systems left it long ago and simply haven't let anyone know.) The SL is facing a fight in which its advantages no longer mean a thing and its disadvantages will tear it apart.

Draken wrote:We have two forward bases inside the League, Lynx and Beowulf. Beowulf is very close to Sol and Lynx to the Mesa.

Nits:

1) Lynx is not in the League, it is in the Verge.

2) Mesa isn't in the Solarian League and has been dealt with. (IIRC, Mesa is surrounded by Shell systems, but not a member of the League. It is at best in the fringes of the league.