What is going on in Talbot?

true but the comment that they are battle fleet wallers and unlikely to have more then a couple squads worth of equipment (which is a very small faction of what they the manties need to equip the guard) is something to think about

The SLN SD's marine force would be at a minimum a 3 company battalion. A marine guard is not just sitting around waiting to conduct boarding operations or manning weapons, they are also the ships police force and ships security quick reaction force plus they provide security to various high security areas.

saber964 wrote:The SLN SD's marine force would be at a minimum a 3 company battalion.

That might be true for Frontier Fleet, if they had any SDs, but it is not necessarily true for Battle Fleet SDs. The point was made earlier that Battle Fleet disdained Marines and only had the bare minimum for ceremonial purposes only.

Don't confuse the SLN's Battle Fleet with a real navy with logical/rational manning requirements or equipment.

Louis R wrote:Part of your problem is that you insist on placing battalions of marines where there's no textev for them.

If I'm not misremembering, Battle Fleet units carry only ceremonial marine detachments, if any at all. Which is entirely reasonable: they have no use for them whatsoever, and the Solarian Marines have a _lot_ of uses for that manpower elsewhere. Pulling the Gendarmes' hoolies out of grinders, mostly.

Looking at the semi-canonical data, the Manties do seem to keep larger Marine contingents in ships than other navies do, with battalion sized formations of it BCs –SDs. Grayson has small Army contingents (those specialized zero-G trained troops) on it’s ships. Haven keeps full battalions on it’s SDs, but formations ½ the size as Manticorian on respective sized medium ships, and none at all on CLs and DDs. The IAN keeps Marines on its light ships, but smaller formations of marines on it’s medium sized ships than Manticore would. And the Sillies don’t appear to have heard of marines, except on 1 class of CA where a company is carried.

So there appears to be no norm, it’s just the doctrine and use of the respective navy.

I don’t remember the SLN’s SD Marine troop size ever mentioned (but I could be wrong) . However, given their deployments (or lack there of), It would makes sense for BF units to lack strong Marine forces. However, I would expect the FF ships to carry decent sized forces, especially the BCs, because they are the fire fighters of the SLN.

However, despite the roles of the Marines, warships will have armories, and the armories will probably be of sufficient size to arm at least the entire crew of the ship (probably 1.5 times when you count in hand weapons). Though without marines, I would expect a lack of Battle Armor and a much smaller number of crewed weapons, long arms, and heavy weapons. I would expect the armories to have mostly carbines and hand weapons, as well as light body armor.

In addition, it was remarked that the SLN SDs DID have large boat bays for their size and carried more pinnances than an RMN craft would. This ties in with my “lift” statement, where plenty of SLN pinnances would be available for the Army formations.

And since the FF probably has marines on board, we may be able to expect battalions on BCs, and ½ battalions on CAs (Which again, is the Manty practice, and not seen everywhere) - if so, there are 4 squadrons of BCs and 2 of CAS captured in Talbott (not to mention the rest of the DDs and CLS), or possibly more than 40 battalions of Marine hardware, plus >200,000 light arms, and nearly a thousand pinnances.

My own thoughts had been that while some of the planets in the Talbott Quadrant might have been manufacturing their own sporting, personal and military arms, many of them would have been buying new or surplus SL stuff, at least for the armies and police. Sure, some of them may have good local designed stuff, particularly for those who had been out of touch with the rest of humanity for a hundred or more years, but generic, relatively cheap, and robust "used" or export military gear would be a way to go. We have seen a lot of description of older design SL equipment like tanks, heavy weapons etc being used where there is civil unrest- on both sides of the conflicts, rebels and governments.
That would mean that, for the most part, the various systems could use newly captured SL gear/weapons at least in training and getting troops and/or police outfitted. Yes, police do need - for the most part- different equipment that soldiers, the supply ability would vary. Since nobody has mentioned problems with the rebel vs government forces having compatability problems with ammunition, my guess would be that it probably isn't a major problem.

The SL military stuff (Gendarmerie, Intervention Battalions, etc) is also going to be serviceable and at least as good as anything FF or most other systems that have been supplied by OFS (or by Alignment operatives like Firebrand) in terms as weapons. Parity is workable when the option is waiting months and perhaps years to get fully supplied.

That the new Mandticorian systems in Talbott Quadrant would want to start producing Manticor mil-spec gear is both expected and good. The thing is going to be not so much getting the designs as making the equipment and production lines plus materials fabrication plants to be able to start turning out the newer tech gear. They already have a base level of tech that is PROBABLY able to produce the heavy and precision levels of equipment, they need to run the cycles of building the production capability and the machines to make the machines (and train the operators) to step up to Manticore Tech quality and capacity for production.
Not the absolute level of build-up as Manticore and Grayson to restore the orbital infrastructure and manufacturing since much of the Talbott area manufacturing appears- as far as I could tell in the reading- to be planetside.

What you would be getting off the SLN or FF warships would be oriented more for boarding actions and Marine type engagements. In the short term, that would provide LOCAL based units of the Talbott forces space combat and armored combat equipment that was at least serviceable plus spares, manuals, testing gear, low to medium level repair shops (off those warships that were carrying marines like the SDs and probably CA/BC) to fit them and repair them and keep them operable until "standard" RMN Marine equipment becomes available and they can transition to it. If nothing else, it provides a force including the supply and repair chains to be able to fight with experience and a knowlege base.

Is there any serious reason they couldn't buy what they need from Haven? At least for training use, until their own production lines are up and running.

zuluwiz wrote:Is there any serious reason they couldn't buy what they need from Haven? At least for training use, until their own production lines are up and running.

Well, two. 1st is that Manticore wants the Talbott Quadrant to dig in and bring themselves up and on-line with both Manticorian tech and shift the education base and system to the Manticorain model as soon as possible. That would be including how and why the stuff operates which means understanding the basics from the perspective of how to think about things and the underlying assumptions of how and what education is needed. Haven is making strides away from the Dolest mindset but why come at the building and schooling/training from that perspective.

2nd is that Manticore doesn't want to have to spend yet that much more money to have Haven both produce the stuff and then create the intermediate step of shifting from Local (theoreticaly based already on SL stuff) equipment to Haven and then to Manticorian equipment. You really also don't want to push Haven products, equipment and sources of a wide range of things into Talbott (or Silesia) and further pump the Haven economy when their own (Manticore's) needs to compleatly rebuild and try to reestablish the export business and volume (and dominance) that it had with both manufacturing and the merchant shipping trade.

It is NOT that Manticore wants to exclude RHN and Haven's economy from Talbott because they are going to need both to help rebuild. It is just that that they don't need to force-feed that trade in and encourage a reliance on RH for goods that could and should be created both at Manticore and in the Manticore area of Talbott (and of Silesia). Much better business to grow Manticore trade. Much better for the stability and knitting close the relationships with Manticore at the same time Manticore recover's its manufacturing capasity ALONG WITH the capasity in the new systems of the Talbott Sector.

Brigade XO wrote:What you would be getting off the SLN or FF warships would be oriented more for boarding actions and Marine type engagements. In the short term, that would provide LOCAL based units of the Talbott forces space combat and armored combat equipment that was at least serviceable plus spares, manuals, testing gear, low to medium level repair shops (off those warships that were carrying marines like the SDs and probably CA/BC) to fit them and repair them and keep them operable until "standard" RMN Marine equipment becomes available and they can transition to it. If nothing else, it provides a force including the supply and repair chains to be able to fight with experience and a knowlege base.

About surplus Solarian versus Manticoran ground combat gear -

I question the assumption that relatively new Solarian gear is not as good or better than typical Royal Manticoran Army (or Marine) gear.

It's not going to be using all the same systems starships do. The Solarian League Navy - despite all the R&D resources of most of human civilization theoretically behind it - has not bothered to develop and deploy what it could, because it hasn't had to. And it hasn't known to use what it has to the best effect, because it's never had practice or urgency. The RMN has had the full, consistent support of what the Star Kingdom could give it for technological development and deployment since the beginning of Project Gram, and it has had a lot of practice.

But those factors don't carry over completely to the ground.

OFS, the Gendarmerie, and the League Marines have had work to do, urgent work, consistently, and have had a fairly sharp edge maintained as a result. (A thuggish one in the Gendarmerie case, granted, and with the confidence that the Marines will take over for them if it gets really awful.) They may not have had to have cutting-edge gear exactly when they've been facing off against poorly funded, isolated rebels, but they will certainly have had the opportunity to iron out kinks and appreciate incremental improvements.

The Royal Manticoran Army, by contrast, has always received no more funding can be spared from the Navy, quite properly. Force multipliers there would be ever so welcome, just because Manticore has been all around so short of bodies for its obligations, but the R&D basis for that has again been whatever may be a cheap spinoff of Project Gram and all (figure electronics support maybe, mostly).

I would think that the best Manticore can (affordably) build is probably better than old, surplus, refurbished Solarian stuff built 50 or 70 years ago. But if it's a choice between merely recent Manticoran ground gear and merely recent Solarian stuff - it's probably a toss-up.

Of course, getting spare parts for Manticoran models, under current circumstances, may be easier. I'm sure transtellars would be happy to sell to the League's enemies, but the hush-money surcharge and shipping time increases would be a bother.

JeffEngel wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:What you would be getting off the SLN or FF warships would be oriented more for boarding actions and Marine type engagements. In the short term, that would provide LOCAL based units of the Talbott forces space combat and armored combat equipment that was at least serviceable plus spares, manuals, testing gear, low to medium level repair shops (off those warships that were carrying marines like the SDs and probably CA/BC) to fit them and repair them and keep them operable until "standard" RMN Marine equipment becomes available and they can transition to it. If nothing else, it provides a force including the supply and repair chains to be able to fight with experience and a knowlege base.

About surplus Solarian versus Manticoran ground combat gear -

I question the assumption that relatively new Solarian gear is not as good or better than typical Royal Manticoran Army (or Marine) gear.

snip

In the book where Honor escapes from the prison camp, there is a passage where the Havenite emergency generator is specifically described as being better than the Manty one. So there is some overlap in quality. How much this would apply to Solarian equipment is still a question, but it is reasonable to assume at least a little bit of overlap.

There is an assumption in this thread that a bunch of guys with guns constitutes an army. Which historically is simply not true, a bunch of guys with guns is an armed mob. It might be enough, but they better not run into someone who knows what they are doing.

There is NO non-RMMC Talbott ground force, there are a bunch of different units on different planets of varied size, organization and quality using different weapons, speaking different languages and with presumably very different tactical and operational doctrines.

Combining a German tank company with one each Italian, Romanian and Mongolian mechanized infantry companies and a Russian HHC and commander is kind of the scale of what you are talking about.

Given time to agree on things like unit organization, equipment, and doctrine and then the many months it takes to train them in this would probably work, but otherwise you are going to get a giant goat rope, and those are spectacularly effective at killing your troops in combat.