How many Star Nations are there with Ships of the Wall?

kzt wrote:We have been told what the system navy of exactly one core world consists of, and that is Beowulf. It has multiple squadrons of SDs. Earth has a major SLN fleet base. So the textual record so far is ALL known core worlds have significant numbers of SDs on hand.

Beowulf is obviously one of the "significant SDF forces" of which we are told there are only "two dozen or so."

Sol doesn't have a system defense force because it it has a major SLN base. There is a distinction there you're not acknowledging; the distinction between SLN bases and System Defense Forces. We have no clear idea regarding SLN dispositions, but we have Words of Weber that there are only about 25 significant System defense forces in the League and Core worlds have been at peace for nearly a millennium so Core Worlds generally don't have more than a customs service/coast guard.

FWIW, we probably know 12 of the 25 Solarian System Defense Forces -- other than Beowulf's -- they plan to call themselves the Renaissance Factor

isaac_newton wrote:

potter12 wrote:SNIP

4. The RMN had battleships and Dreadnaughts that were in service for more than 200 years. There has to be navies around who still have Battleships of DN in service that are that old or older.

I guess this reply is not quite on topic, but the loooong life spans did surprise me when I first saw them... rather as if HMS Victory was still being used in WW1 & 2!

Although HMS Victory herself was active for about 60 years (She was 46 during her most famous battle; Trafalgar). And that was for a wooden hulled ship floating in water; hardly a benign environment.

But she could be used that long because those 60 years had relatively little naval technological revolution, so she was still a big powerful and effective unit decades into her operational life.

Although even in the post WWI-era when Naval technology was undergoing multiple revolutions there were some surprisingly long lived ships. USS Midway (CV-41) just missed the end of WWII; commissioned barely a week after Japan signed the documents of surrender, and yet her final hurrah was coincidentally also when she was 46 years, during Desert Storm (admittedly with some major overhauls along the way. But unlike the Iowa-class BBs which also came back for that war Midway hadn't been repeatedly mothballed along the way; she was a working ship till the end)


Given a less destructive environment, and a more stable technology base it doesn't seem too surprising to me to see capital ships in service over four times as long as some of their wet navy predecessors.

Wallers are shipa to project power. This was established in 'War of Honor' by Janacek and Houseman while using the previous reason for downsizing the RMN.

By maintaining lower amounts of waller, they were, in theory, promoting peace. BC and lower are more typical for your average SDF because of speed and pirates being somewhere between frigates and light cruisers.

Peep's built battleships because that ensured you HAD to use waller against them. And that freed Peep SD's for offensive actions.

Can't say who else may have wallers but I am sure most SDF have, at best, a few BB's for flagships.

stewart wrote:A current 20th/21st Century parallel is 5 DDG-51's (or even 5 Spruance DD's) could take out a CA / BC vintage 1916 Jutland, if they used Harpoon at a 30+ mile range; If those same Burke's or Spruances got in a gunfight, the 8 / 10 / 12 inch guns on the Jutland era ships would win the day.
Zavala and Desron 301 won thru the weapons advancement that the SLN had refused to recognize. (they do now)

-- Stewart

Yes and no on 5 Burke class DD's smoking 4 WWI era BC's. During WWI guns were mostly flat shooting and only had a range 22-25,000yds. The range was so short because the guns could not elevate higher than about 20 degrees. while the advanced guns of the Burke class can shoot just as far or with advanced ammo and propellants out to 40-42,000yds and with special ammo and propellants out to 63nm, and with the new guns aboard the Zumwalt class can shoot to 44,000yds and in land attack 100nm.

saber964 wrote:

stewart wrote:A current 20th/21st Century parallel is 5 DDG-51's (or even 5 Spruance DD's) could take out a CA / BC vintage 1916 Jutland, if they used Harpoon at a 30+ mile range; If those same Burke's or Spruances got in a gunfight, the 8 / 10 / 12 inch guns on the Jutland era ships would win the day.
Zavala and Desron 301 won thru the weapons advancement that the SLN had refused to recognize. (they do now)

-- Stewart

Yes and no on 5 Burke class DD's smoking 4 WWI era BC's. During WWI guns were mostly flat shooting and only had a range 22-25,000yds. The range was so short because the guns could not elevate higher than about 20 degrees. while the advanced guns of the Burke class can shoot just as far or with advanced ammo and propellants out to 40-42,000yds and with special ammo and propellants out to 63nm, and with the new guns aboard the Zumwalt class can shoot to 44,000yds and in land attack 100nm.

Spru Cans and Burke Cans would NOT take out the WWI BC with their 5"54's.
Harpoon and conventional Tomahawk are MUCH better for that task

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:Spru Cans and Burke Cans would NOT take out the WWI BC with their 5"54's.
Harpoon and conventional Tomahawk are MUCH better for that task

I don't remember any testing being done against ships with 12" armor. Would they do much other then tear up the teak decking and mess up the paint?

saber964 wrote:

stewart wrote:A current 20th/21st Century parallel is 5 DDG-51's (or even 5 Spruance DD's) could take out a CA / BC vintage 1916 Jutland, if they used Harpoon at a 30+ mile range; If those same Burke's or Spruances got in a gunfight, the 8 / 10 / 12 inch guns on the Jutland era ships would win the day.
Zavala and Desron 301 won thru the weapons advancement that the SLN had refused to recognize. (they do now)

-- Stewart

Yes and no on 5 Burke class DD's smoking 4 WWI era BC's. During WWI guns were mostly flat shooting and only had a range 22-25,000yds. The range was so short because the guns could not elevate higher than about 20 degrees. while the advanced guns of the Burke class can shoot just as far or with advanced ammo and propellants out to 40-42,000yds and with special ammo and propellants out to 63nm, and with the new guns aboard the Zumwalt class can shoot to 44,000yds and in land attack 100nm.

No they can't. The PROPOSED guns to be installed on the Zumwalt could, but were never developed as they were supposedly too expensive. Read, way too much corruption and graft to redevelop easily reconstituted old technology. Died when development for new ARMY artillery, 8" 200mm+ guns also vanished. They were tied together.

Of course the land based guided artillery actually makes sense as the fall back plan, the ol' 155mm stuff, has only a radius of operations for accurate guided fire of around 20miles/30km. This horrific limitation effectively kaboshed the Excalibur program as it was now neutered. If they had gone with the 8"/200mm new artillery for a modern battlefield, where one has to fire and then skedadle before return fire destroys you, they would have achieved a +++60mile/100km radius of guided munitions without the addition of rocket assistance while also sending the same explosive charge downrange as the 155mm guys. With rocket assistance would have achieved around 120-200miles depending on if you are talking the sea based version or land based. Instead... The neutered 155mm boys with a guided shell are sending at most 10-12lbs of explosive per warhead. 25lbs is standard. True, explosives have improved over time, but not to that great of an extent.

In short, the Kabosh on the 8" gun development, of which they had the barrel design done along with the shell, but had simply not calibrated the system via trials, neutered not only modern battlefields making for cheap guided munitions, but also effectively destroyed cheap sea to land based attack. A gigantic portion of the world is within 150miles of navigable water. Yes, we got away with drones providing guided munitions in Afgan/Iraq. Of course this is a useless tactical deployment/strategy against anyone with even rudimentary surface to air capabilities.

PS. Officially the 8" gun development was kaboshed due to "weight". Some DoD pentagon weenie, probably from an airforce background who loved his bombers/fighters and did not want to lose their designated roles, or more likely corrupt politician whose district made 155mm shells, got a provision drafted in that the 8" guns had to able to withstand their own fire in a land based vehicle just like the 155mm guys. Well, duh, the obvious answer to that would be the 8" artillery now would weigh about 150tons and impossible to transport or move over common bridges. Ergo, this is the "official" reason the program was terminated.

IF common sense had prevailed we would have achieved 8" gun at same weight as 155mm as everyone had ALREADY agreed that modern counter fire on unmoving stationary artillery made the armor scheme of 155mm current tracked vehicles obsolete. Nah, better to keep ones head buried in the sand and hope for the best instead. So far, hope for the best has worked.

PPS. My distances for 200mm seem long to my memory. I get the R&D on the different types of 8mm confused. Big difference between the naval version and the land based version proposed. Same goes for differences in type of rocket assisted ranges.

stewart wrote:A current 20th/21st Century parallel is 5 DDG-51's (or even 5 Spruance DD's) could take out a CA / BC vintage 1916 Jutland, if they used Harpoon at a 30+ mile range; If those same Burke's or Spruances got in a gunfight, the 8 / 10 / 12 inch guns on the Jutland era ships would win the day.
Zavala and Desron 301 won thru the weapons advancement that the SLN had refused to recognize. (they do now)

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:

saber964 wrote:
Yes and no on 5 Burke class DD's smoking 4 WWI era BC's. During WWI guns were mostly flat shooting and only had a range 22-25,000yds. The range was so short because the guns could not elevate higher than about 20 degrees. while the advanced guns of the Burke class can shoot just as far or with advanced ammo and propellants out to 40-42,000yds and with special ammo and propellants out to 63nm, and with the new guns aboard the Zumwalt class can shoot to 44,000yds and in land attack 100nm.

Spru Cans and Burke Cans would NOT take out the WWI BC with their 5"54's.
Harpoon and conventional Tomahawk are MUCH better for that task

-- Stewart

I wouldn't want to take Burkes up against Invincible, gun to gun, but as built the Invincible-class 12" guns could only elevate to 13.5° (18,850 yards range) and even their mid-war modification only increased that to 16° (20,435 yards range). The Burkes 5"/62 gun can reach out to 25,880 yards and has a vastly higher rate of fire. The one 5" gun on a Burke can put out more rounds a minute than the entire 8 gun broadside of an Invincible (16-20 rounds per minute, vs 1.5 rounds per minute per gun = 12 rounds per minute)

Sure, it can't pierce the belt armor, but those BCs weren't as well protected from plunging fire (like the Burke's rounds would be at near their maximum range)

And of course the DD has incomparably better fire control, and at least a 5 knot speed advantage. (But would likely be more affected by sea state than the BC)


In theory the DD should be able to hold clear of the BC's range and rain accurate 5" fire down, which at minimum should shred the upper works and hole the funnels (slowing the BC) and generally ruining it's day. But in practice you only need one thing to go wrong and then even a single 12" shell would devastate a modern DD.


So like I said I wouldn't want to go gun to gun, I'd much prefer to stand well off and use Harpoons or Tomahawks.

Hi Weird Harold,

Actually, in a pearl from 2006, RFC indicated around 2/3 of the SL had only LAC's, so almost a third had some hyper warships.

However you break down those ~600 with hyper warships, approximately 2 dozen or 25 with at least a squadron of the wall is more than I often projected [~300 with 5-6, ~150 with 10-12 etc], and not all RF members have large SDF's.

We don't know if some of the navies with large SD forces have them because they build one every five years over the last couple centuries or more than one a year.

While the core has sometimes been defined as the 'old league' [generally under a hundred systems] it might be as many as ~300 systems, the shells could be all the rest or anywhere from 1200 to around 1700 systems, most of whom don't like the SL or perhaps one to a few of their neighbors as the reason they have more than LAC's, NTM those who know or reciprocate those feelings.

We've also been told the Haven Sector is the only volume beyond the surface perimeter of the SL with lots of SD or waller equipped navies, so no one expects a torrent of verge navies with 1 or 2 SD's etc to rescue our heroes or to swarm and plunder the SL as it collapses, which surprises me since there ought to be at least a couple.

I'm afraid any ex-SLN dreadnoughts 2-5 centuries old despite being kept in some system's orbit are not a serious threat anymore.

But having someone beyond the SLN as targets will at least keep the story going until the MAlign is found and engaged.

L

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:We have been told what the system navy of exactly one core world consists of, and that is Beowulf. It has multiple squadrons of SDs. Earth has a major SLN fleet base. So the textual record so far is ALL known core worlds have significant numbers of SDs on hand.

Beowulf is obviously one of the "significant SDF forces" of which we are told there are only "two dozen or so."

Sol doesn't have a system defense force because it it has a major SLN base. There is a distinction there you're not acknowledging; the distinction between SLN bases and System Defense Forces. We have no clear idea regarding SLN dispositions, but we have Words of Weber that there are only about 25 significant System defense forces in the League and Core worlds have been at peace for nearly a millennium so Core Worlds generally don't have more than a customs service/coast guard.

FWIW, we probably know 12 of the 25 Solarian System Defense Forces -- other than Beowulf's -- they plan to call themselves the Renaissance Factor

Depending on the range the Jutland era ships would be much less accurate in a gun battle than the modern ships. However I wonder just how much damage a 5 inch shell could do a heavily armoured ship of the line, while I do know that the heavier shells would destroy the modern destroyer if they hit.

My guess is that a pure long range gun battle would end inconclusively with the Jutland ships having lots of superstructure damage, but no mortal wounds, and the modern DDs would be most likely shaken by misses but unhurt.
Allow the modern ships to use their missiles (ship and helo launched) though and it would be rapidly over.

saber964 wrote:

stewart wrote:A current 20th/21st Century parallel is 5 DDG-51's (or even 5 Spruance DD's) could take out a CA / BC vintage 1916 Jutland, if they used Harpoon at a 30+ mile range; If those same Burke's or Spruances got in a gunfight, the 8 / 10 / 12 inch guns on the Jutland era ships would win the day.
Zavala and Desron 301 won thru the weapons advancement that the SLN had refused to recognize. (they do now)

-- Stewart

Yes and no on 5 Burke class DD's smoking 4 WWI era BC's. During WWI guns were mostly flat shooting and only had a range 22-25,000yds. The range was so short because the guns could not elevate higher than about 20 degrees. while the advanced guns of the Burke class can shoot just as far or with advanced ammo and propellants out to 40-42,000yds and with special ammo and propellants out to 63nm, and with the new guns aboard the Zumwalt class can shoot to 44,000yds and in land attack 100nm.