How was Haven supposed to fight the SL (Detweiler Plan)?

tlb wrote:Here it is from chapter 30:

"Think about it, Willie," White Haven said. "If someone had anything like the number of capital ships we have, and if all of them had this kind of technology, they wouldn't have had to raid our infrastructure. They could have simply arrived, demonstrated their invisibility, and demanded our surrender, and we wouldn't have had any choice but to give it to them. If they'd gotten a couple of dozen capital ships with this new drive of theirs as far in-system as they got their pods before launch, what other option would we have had? Even if we'd wanted to bring in Home Fleet—every single ship at Trevor's Star, for that matter—they'd already have control the planetary orbitals long before we could get into position. For that matter, they'd've been into missile range of the planets before we could even bring the system-defense missiles online to nail them! And even under the Eridani Edict, they'd be fully justified in bombarding the planets if we refused to surrender under those circumstances. But instead of going for the jugular, they attacked our arms and legs.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This goes against what we discussed about what it means to "control the orbitals." White Haven is saying that if someone decloaks in orbit and, presumably, destroys the orbital defences, they can demand the surrender under the threat of bombarding, even if Home Fleet is an hour away and Third Fleet is 3 hours.

True, but he is only giving a hypothetical; rather than stating that Manticore would surrender to ships that could be destroyed by the palace defenses.

I think what we were saying in the other thread represents a more realistic version of commanding the orbitals. The same as saying that Honor commanded the orbitals in the Sol System, even though she was outside the hyper limit (although it would not be a good idea to bombard the planet from there).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And the Katanas. Thunderbolt was the first time they saw action, so discovering that the brand, new RHN LACs are no match for a space superiority LAC that they didn't know existed would count as a huge surprise too.

Though that's somewhat less of an issue since the RHN LAC doctrine didn't really contain the offensive anti-shipping strike role that the Shrikes and Ferrets were built for (and that Katana was built primarily to stop). Haven's LACs were there primarily to act defensively to blunt the RMN offensive LAC strikes.

And Katana's are somewhat less effective as "escort fighters" than they are as defensive dogfighters. So they're not going to negate the defensive shield that Haven's LACs provide to Haven's fleets.

So a definite surprise, but not one that should radically alter the force levels Haven needs to counter the RMN/GSN.

tlb wrote:The requirement to control the orbitals only applies when you intend to bombard the planet as part of a surrender demand. As you read the books you will find examples of drive by destruction of orbitals, for example Haven destroying the structures in orbit at Basilisk. It is considered nice to give warning, so civilians can evacuate; but it is understood that some will not be able to leave and so will die.

[snip]
RFC explains some of the meaning of the Edict in the Pearls at Expanding upon the Eridani Edict.

However as we saw at Hypatia in Uncompromising Honor that kind of drive by destruction of orbitals that contain significant portions of the planetary population, and are not otherwise a military target is a violation of the Edict.

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Megan Petersen felt herself go cold. Until that very moment, she realized, some part of her had hoped Hajdu’s threat to destroy the Hypatian orbital infrastructure before it could be completely evacuated was only some sick bluff. Maybe she’d been able to do that because what he proposed to do instead violated so many laws of interstellar warfare. In fact, it was a violation of the fourth clause of the Eridani Edict, part of the League’s very Constitution.
My God, she thought. That’s what this is, really, isn’t it? This “Operation Buccaneer” was conceived from the beginning specifically as an Eridani violation. It’s a terror campaign, and all Hajdu’s really doing is coming out of the shadows to underline that for all its future victims!
How had they gotten here? How had they reached a point where the Solarian League was willing to openly violate its own Eridani Edict? The edict specifically designed to prevent this sort of atrocity

I think that's due to this bit from Expanding upon the Eridani Edict

Expanding upon the Eridani Edict wrote:Essentially, the Eridani Edict says that no star nation may engage in the wholesale and wanton slaughter of civilian populations using any weapon of mass destruction. The actual language of the edict is clearly oriented towards nuclear or kinetic strikes, but it applies more to the intent and purpose of the weapon than to its actual characteristics, except inasmuch as those characteristics may define the… controlability of its area of effect.

Under existing interstellar law, the phrase "wholesale and wanton slaughter" has a very specific meaning.

"Wholesale" means civilian casualties which go beyond the collateral damage associated with legitimate military operations as defined under the "laws of war" applicable to the Honorverse. "Wanton" means that those casualties were inflicted deliberately, or that prudent precautions to prevent them from happening were not taken.

If you've got large residential orbitals without a legitimate military target then attacking them with is "wholesale and wanton slaughter" and is being done using your warship's missiles which are "weapons of mass destruction".

Whereas the orbitals at Manticore, Sphynx, and Gryphon were a different matter because a) their civilian population was far lower, but more importantly b) they were legitimate military targets and so the death of their civilian population fell within the norms of collateral damage. The subsequent deaths when Manticore couldn't prevent the debris from impacting the planet apparently fell into a loophole because they weren't caused, directly, by weapons of mass destruction.

So destruction of the residential orbitals at Hypatia would be subject to the exact same rules as planetary bombardment. (And they don't seem like they contain any of the types of planetary military targets that are permitted for bombardment with WMDs after the government refuses to surrender despite you defeating any force attempting to dispute your control of the orbitals.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
This goes against what we discussed about what it means to "control the orbitals." White Haven is saying that if someone decloaks in orbit and, presumably, destroys the orbital defences, they can demand the surrender under the threat of bombarding, even if Home Fleet is an hour away and Third Fleet is 3 hours.

There is the legal issue, and then there is the practical issue.

Legally, nobody is allowed to enter your house and empty your safe. However if they break into your house and you wake up at 3am with a dozen guys in your house, one of whom is holding a gun to your kids head and explains that every minute it takes to open the safe he's going to cut off one of your wife's fingers you might decide that you'll let them empty your safe.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
This is the Two Generals problem. What happens if the second DB never makes it through? Then one fleet moves and the second doesn't, so they won't have mutual support. Defeat in detail.

Yeah. Too many moving parts which requires that your opponent behave exactly as you hope they will. What if Customs gets suspicious and hauls the BD in and goes over it in detail and asks the crew lots of questions? How prepared are they? Where are all the part of the DB made? How good are their fake credentials?

What if they have to close the WH for something completely different, like an accident? What if your card is declined when paying for the WH passage?

It's horribly complex.

Jonathan_S wrote:However as we saw at Hypatia in Uncompromising Honor that kind of drive by destruction of orbitals that contain significant portions of the planetary population, and are not otherwise a military target is a violation of the Edict.

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Megan Petersen felt herself go cold. Until that very moment, she realized, some part of her had hoped Hajdu’s threat to destroy the Hypatian orbital infrastructure before it could be completely evacuated was only some sick bluff. Maybe she’d been able to do that because what he proposed to do instead violated so many laws of interstellar warfare. In fact, it was a violation of the fourth clause of the Eridani Edict, part of the League’s very Constitution.
My God, she thought. That’s what this is, really, isn’t it? This “Operation Buccaneer” was conceived from the beginning specifically as an Eridani violation. It’s a terror campaign, and all Hajdu’s really doing is coming out of the shadows to underline that for all its future victims!
How had they gotten here? How had they reached a point where the Solarian League was willing to openly violate its own Eridani Edict? The edict specifically designed to prevent this sort of atrocity

I think that's due to this bit from Expanding upon the Eridani Edict

Expanding upon the Eridani Edict wrote:Essentially, the Eridani Edict says that no star nation may engage in the wholesale and wanton slaughter of civilian populations using any weapon of mass destruction. The actual language of the edict is clearly oriented towards nuclear or kinetic strikes, but it applies more to the intent and purpose of the weapon than to its actual characteristics, except inasmuch as those characteristics may define the… controlability of its area of effect.

Under existing interstellar law, the phrase "wholesale and wanton slaughter" has a very specific meaning.

"Wholesale" means civilian casualties which go beyond the collateral damage associated with legitimate military operations as defined under the "laws of war" applicable to the Honorverse. "Wanton" means that those casualties were inflicted deliberately, or that prudent precautions to prevent them from happening were not taken.

If you've got large residential orbitals without a legitimate military target then attacking them with is "wholesale and wanton slaughter" and is being done using your warship's missiles which are "weapons of mass destruction".

Whereas the orbitals at Manticore, Sphynx, and Gryphon were a different matter because a) their civilian population was far lower, but more importantly b) they were legitimate military targets and so the death of their civilian population fell within the norms of collateral damage. The subsequent deaths when Manticore couldn't prevent the debris from impacting the planet apparently fell into a loophole because they weren't caused, directly, by weapons of mass destruction.

So destruction of the residential orbitals at Hypatia would be subject to the exact same rules as planetary bombardment. (And they don't seem like they contain any of the types of planetary military targets that are permitted for bombardment with WMDs after the government refuses to surrender despite you defeating any force attempting to dispute your control of the orbitals.

Although she feels that this an EE violation, most of the language is about strikes on the planet surface. We have people in this forum that claimed what Honor did to the orbital structures in the Sol System included EE violations, because some of what was destroyed was purely civilian (although without the civilian deaths that Hypatia was facing).

Hypatia was given a deadline that would have reduced deaths and in that respect was not much different than Haven's destruction at Basilisk when not all civilians could abandon the targets (warehouses and transshipment terminals) in time. This might be an example of the paradox of the heap.

I think there is more gray area on the question of orbital structures than you suggest. I believe the woman was responding to the spirit, rather than the letter of the Edict.

tlb wrote:The accidents talked about in the Wiki quote concern a missile or an energy beam impacting a planet. OB was carefully planned so it did not happen. Space junk killing people does not count as an illegal accident in that case. You will find numerous examples of officers from Haven and Manticore worried about a missile flight that might impact a planet; but you will not find any concern that a destroyed structure might impact until after a battle is over. There is nothing in the Edict that protects anything in space, no notice is required.

My bad, Manticore will understand...all is forgiven since its not an EE. If someone came over and killed 15,000,000 of my citizens I would consider it an EE violation and I would be out for blood. Weather the SLN considers it an EE violation or not Manticore might and they might decide to do something about if they thought they could like gather 3rd Fleet, 8th Fleet and reinforcements from Grayson and New Berlin to crush 2nd Fleet just because now the RMN is looking for blood and so it the GSN because I bet they lost a few million as well.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:You need to read WAR OF HONOR. The Protector's Own brought a few BC(P)s to the party when they showed up to support their CO. Weber does not offer details, but it seems obvious that the BC(P)s augmented the offensive fire of the Harringtons. Offensively, a BC(P) equals at least 2/3s of an RHN SD(P) and is very capable against an SD. Defensively; they are considerably inferior. However; when mixed with a fleet of SD(P)s and SDs, it will be difficult to recognize that many of the pods are being launched by the BCs before your fleet gets reamed.

You need to read At All Costs Chapter 7. "We can add about a hundred and sixty pod-laying battlecruisers to the total, but they cant stand in the wall against proper superdreadnoughts."

IN Marsh, the RHN expected 6-1 odds for them in SD(P)'s or better but ended up with 3-2 against them and those SD(P)'s were all GSN/RMN so they had the 1.3 force multiplier so it is damn near 2-1 against them in SD(P)'s.

Why not have the SD(P)'s roll pods and hand them off the regular SD's? This will bleed them dry a hell of a lot faster but the SD's would have a hell of a better chance at survival when compared to BC(P)'s.

tlb wrote:The accidents talked about in the Wiki quote concern a missile or an energy beam impacting a planet. OB was carefully planned so it did not happen. Space junk killing people does not count as an illegal accident in that case. You will find numerous examples of officers from Haven and Manticore worried about a missile flight that might impact a planet; but you will not find any concern that a destroyed structure might impact until after a battle is over. There is nothing in the Edict that protects anything in space, no notice is required.

Sigs wrote:My bad, Manticore will understand...all is forgiven since its not an EE. If someone came over and killed 15,000,000 of my citizens I would consider it an EE violation and I would be out for blood. Weather the SLN considers it an EE violation or not Manticore might and they might decide to do something about if they thought they could like gather 3rd Fleet, 8th Fleet and reinforcements from Grayson and New Berlin to crush 2nd Fleet just because now the RMN is looking for blood and so it the GSN because I bet they lost a few million as well.

No one ever said that Manticore will forgive and forget and they will certainly be out for the blood of the culprits. All that was said is that it is not an EE violation.

Who is this 2nd fleet that is going to be crushed? The perpetrators of OB were not even a fleet.

As an example, I thought the Green Pines nuclear explosion would count against Cachet and Zilwicki as an EE violation; but RFC explained that it did not qualify. It was murderous, but a civilian explosive would not reach the level to violate the Edict.

tlb wrote:

Sigs wrote:My bad, Manticore will understand...all is forgiven since its not an EE. If someone came over and killed 15,000,000 of my citizens I would consider it an EE violation and I would be out for blood. Weather the SLN considers it an EE violation or not Manticore might and they might decide to do something about if they thought they could like gather 3rd Fleet, 8th Fleet and reinforcements from Grayson and New Berlin to crush 2nd Fleet just because now the RMN is looking for blood and so it the GSN because I bet they lost a few million as well.

No one ever said that Manticore will forgive and forget and they will certainly be out for the blood of the culprits. All that was said is that it is not an EE violation.

Completely agreed with tlb here.

When I painted the scenario of Tourville's arrival a couple pages ago (though it was probably the day before yesterday...) I specifically wrote about "chaos and destruction" but not EEV. Manticore wasn't claiming it was a violation, but they definitely were out for blood against whoever was responsible. And whether it was a violation or not, Tourville would want to be made very clear that Haven was not responsible for it.

Anyway, at that point the war was over. Manticore could not continue operations against Haven since it didn't have the infrastructure to support it. The MA needed to negotiate. Honor would have known it it, D'Orville would have known it, the Queen would too. If it was Haven, they'd just dictate terms. Since it wasn't, they would be nice and would bring in the intel that they were beginning to believe themselves too that there was a third party conspiring to prolong the war.

Up thread you asked whether Lester Tourville would have known about the plans, so whether his honesty could be irrelevant. Tourville would have known of any plans to attack the MBS before he set sail to attack the MBS, the same way that Cachat would have known of any Havenite covert operations in Torch. These are high-placed officers of the Havenite government and military would be aware of all plans. For example, Tourville knew where Bolthole was located.

That leaves rogue elements in Haven, of course. But without the support of the government, it's a highly unlikely proposition. If those elements had the level of funding necessary to accomplish those goals, that funding wasn't coming from the government. So this again brings a third party that is interfering by funding.