GA Strategy, Tactics and Targets

KNick wrote:While the SLN does not equate slavers and pirates, unlike the GA members, they do consider pirates as criminals. Their thinking seems to run along the lines of "Slavery is "business as usual"", while piracy is bad for business. It is not necessarily the SLN that has determined their course of action, but the Transstellars. Slavery does not impact them like piracy does. While the SLN might let a slaver go, the same is not true of a pirate. So, for good or ill, FF has kept piracy to a minimum. Once FF has been removed there is no other force to keep it in check and, as lucrative as piracy can be, it is possible that there will be a rise in the number of pirates.

Actually, the Solarian League is a signatory to the Cherwell Convention, so technically they do have the same punishments for genetic slavery as they do for pirates. It's just that much of the time they do not actively enforce it, and in some areas deliberately look the other way.

n7axw wrote:I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

Don

Well, no. The objective of warfare is to get particular political objectives.

Harrington explains rather clearly why that strategy is worthless against the league, because it cannot lead to a peace. For starters, the league is incapable of surrendering, because surrender requires a unanimous vote.

The strategy that leads to a good peace is to leave segments of the League intact, but separate, and to transform the Verge and Shall into independent places.

As an aside, the author has what I view as the peculiarity that planets have unitary governments, even those that broke down into rather low tech.

phillies wrote:As an aside, the author has what I view as the peculiarity that planets have unitary governments, even those that broke down into rather low tech.

Well, probably most systems were colonized by one group, so they had unitary governments from the get-go.

Bill Woods wrote:

phillies wrote:As an aside, the author has what I view as the peculiarity that planets have unitary governments, even those that broke down into rather low tech.

Well, probably most systems were colonized by one group, so they had unitary governments from the get-go.

Even with relatively low tech one can form an effective administration. Radios are not complicated to build, and I doubt that colonies spread uniformly over the planet. Most probably started in Landing, and then grew from there, only spreading everywhere when they had the infrastructure and tech to do so.
We know of some systems that split up, like Grayson and Saltash, so it is not given.

Bill Woods wrote:

phillies wrote:As an aside, the author has what I view as the peculiarity that planets have unitary governments, even those that broke down into rather low tech.

Well, probably most systems were colonized by one group, so they had unitary governments from the get-go.

And it's likely a lot cheaper and certainly a lot safer to fund a colonization expedition than to fight a secession war.

This is in response to Harold and Jonathan. Manticore almost always tried to minimize casualties on their war with Haven unless confronted in battle. Even then surrenders were honored. In her raids Honor gave civilians the opportunity to evacuate the orbital infrastructures she was committed to destroy. As, I might add, did Tourville, Giscard, and Theisman. In fact the only raid that I remember in the honorverse where that was not true was Oyster Bay and that one was carried out by the Alignment. So there should be no controversy about minimizing civialian casualties. At least for the GA, there is a concensus about that.

As for Honor's strategy, that also depends heavily upon the use of force, or at least the perception that the GA could apply overwhelming force in the specific situation. Imagine an overwhelming force of SDPs showing up on your doorstep with the message, "Renounce your ties with the League and sign a peace treaty with us and we will offer trade ties, the use of the wormholes, and protection against League retaliation. Refuse our offer and we will destroy your infrastructure, your sdf, and anything the League can use to wage war against us."

That is the heart of Honor's strategy. To quote the Borg, "resistance is futile," BUT, there is a positive alternative to resistance if you will but take it. The bet with this strategy is that some of the worlds in the core, most worlds in the shell, and the Verge will find the offer good enough not to refuse; indeed, that loyalty to the League is weak enough that this strategy will pare away the League, denying the enemy the resourses needed for waging war, which, after all, was the point I was making in my previous post.

One other comment, Jonathan, IIRC, made the point is the real goal is to destoy the enemy's desire to resist rather than his ability. With the qualification that the two often go together, I accept that as a friendly amendment.

Don

lyonheart wrote:The BF reserve has been the club the mandarins have used to threaten all the restive systems especially in the shell and protectorates, who know they can't begin to fight those huge numbers.

Well, Manticore has just revealed that it's only a Nerf club, and those mothballed ships are far from ready for action. They would need to be activated, they probably need a lot of upgrades just to be as ineffective as the ships Manticore has already swatted like flies, and, oh, yeah, they need crews. Over 6,000 trained, experienced officers and enlisted per ship, is it not? Like the half million or so basking in the sun on Spindle who are definitely not available.

That could be a recruiting angle - get captured and imprisoned in a tropical paradise!

Unless they get so many they have to start shipping 'em off to Hell.
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If a business tries something that doesn't work, they have to stop doing it or go broke. If the government tries something that doesn't work, they will just keep shoveling our money into it forever.

n7axw wrote:This is in response to Harold and Jonathan. Manticore almost always tried to minimize casualties on their war with Haven unless confronted in battle. Even then surrenders were honored. ...

That is absolutely true for the GA and pretty much everyone else -- Except the MAlign. IF there is a deliberate Eridani Edict violation, it will be the MAlign behind it; provided they feel someone else will take the blame

n7axw wrote:In fact the only raid that I remember in the honorverse where that was not true was Oyster Bay and that one was carried out by the Alignment.

Even Oyster Bay was conducted with concern for the letter of the EE. One of the commanders makes the observation that the EE doesn't cover collateral damage from pieces of large orbital structures.

Where an EE violation is likely to occur is a situation like the People's Navy in Exile and their contract attack on Torch.

There was supposed to be no evidence leading back to the MAN or MAlign (and I hope Torch finds those demolition charges) and no star nation responsible for the PNE to retaliate against.

n7axw wrote:As for Honor's strategy, that also depends heavily upon the use of force, or at least the perception that the GA could apply overwhelming force in the specific situation.

Perhaps a concise summary of the GA message would be:

"We're at war with the Solarian League and her allies. If you aren't part of the League nor one of its Allies, we have no quarrel with you."

Jonathan_S wrote:

n7axw wrote:I get a feeling that some of us here are thinking of war as being like chess. It's not. The object of war is to destroy the enemy's ability to resist. To do that his ships, fleets, orbital infrastructures, factories, etc. are fair game up to the point of surrender;in short, everything short of violating the Eridani Edict. Those were the rules of the war against Haven. There is no reason to believe that the war against the League would be different.

Don

More often wars are lost because the enemies willingness to resist was destroyed; not their physical ability. (Or remind me what Viet Cong attacked destroyed the US's ability to produce arms, ammo, aircraft, etc, etc. For that mater reminder me what attack the American colonists mounted that destroyed Britain's Army, Navy, or arms manufacturing)

Sometimes the will to fight is broken by breaking the ability. But guerrilla wars clearly show that no mater how much ability to fight you destroy, if the will to fight still exists the fighting won't end; it'll just change.


Aggressively attacking the ability of the League to resist is likely to generate anger and defiance in the League worlds, upping their willingness to resist. And the GA isn't big enough to suppress and occupy the League long term; if the majority of the component world still want revenge its only a matter of time before their combined R&D and industry generate a resurgent military that swamps the GA.

You need (IMO; which mirrors what Honor said at one point in the books) to encourage the League member worlds to be dissatisfies with the League government and view the war as a unjustified attack by the SL bureaucracy again Manticore; one that proves they are both corrupt and inept. So the League member worlds will break away and form separate peaces with the GA

To be honest outside of wars where the winning side basically killed all of the losers no wars have truly been won by completely destroying an enemy's ability to resist IMO. They are almost all won by destroying an enemy's will to resist instead.

Now in theory the GA could effectively destroy the League's ability to resist by achieving space supremacy, aka completely destroying their fleet and ability to build ships but doing so across the whole League would be incredibly difficult. And it would be even harder to prevent the League from obtaining more warships, the means to build them, or both in the long term. And odds are that what the GA would have to do in order to achieve space supremacy will anger the League's population to the point that as soon as they get new warships either purchased, captured, or built they will be out for GA blood.

We know there are 100 of the wall near beowolf. If they are serious about doing this fast, it seems the more ships used the better. So i am thinking most of the available fleet units in the core will be gathered for the expedition in to beowolf. Once dealt with, that means ther will be limited units in the core. Also, we know the main bases and infrastructure and industry for the league navy will be here, so launching raiding forces to strike and clean them up will be useful. The plan is to build battlecruisers, but to do that they need their systems intact.
This will force them to deploy units for system security, potentially leaving the verge unprotected.
If they make it clear they are only targeting the federal league assets, it would encourage those to seperate themselves from it.
Nolan, zunker, roulette, visigoth, beowolf, joshua are all terminnii that the alliance will soon hold in the league itself. From there they are the quickest means of approach to the alliiance, and allow the alliance to strike at the hearth of the enemy. They need to trimm any league assets close enough to threaten these systems.
SAy they kill most of the current ship captains, they will either promote those unready, or send those that have been off ships for years to fill in.