Attacking Earth

StealthSeeker wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:
They already have a fleet of 500+ ships which was intended to be the 2nd wave after Filaletre's fleet, (even though they didn't think it would be required) that plus the task force which was trying to use the Beowulf terminus to support Filaletre might be the force that goes to Beowulf to stop the Beowulfers from leaving the league.

I don't remember any "additional" units that were going to follow Filareta on his attack of Manticore. Only the 80 some that were to cross from Beowulf through the wormhole. The only discussion I can find of units joining Filareta is back in MoH where Rajampet is talking about building up Filareta's fleet to about 400 SD's. But even if those 500 ships did exist, they are currently way out in the verge and it would be difficult to get a message to them and have them travel back with in the 2 month window necessary to prevent the Beowulf vote.

But that is all about attacking Beowulf. The discussion here is about attacking Earth after a catastrophic attack on Beowulf has already occurred. How would the GA go about attacking earth and the SLN. What obstacles and problems would be encountered in attacking Earth and so on.

Which is why the redeployment of our active wall is designed to concentrate no fewer than an additional five hundred wallers on Tasmania - this time with complete logistical support and a powerful Frontier Fleet screen - within two and a half months. In three months' time, that total will reach six hundred. Which means we'll be able to dispatch a second wave, substantially larger and even more powerfully supported, against Manticore within a maximum of five months -

StealthSeeker wrote:The Frontier Fleet always seems to be strapped for ships and what they have seems to be of much older and refurbished classes. I don't think Crandal's attack force used any Frontier Fleet ships and she had a good number of smaller class ships.

I just don't see the Frontier Fleet coming up with the number of ships needed for the commerce raiding that the new SLN "High Admiral" is talking about. And it didn't seem like he was talking about taking the time to build a bunch of new ships for how soon he wanted to begin the task. Though he was talking about building a bunch of smaller classes rather than SD's, (he could turn them out much faster) at least until the technology gap is closed. But he is still going to need that bunch of smaller class ships that are almost immediately available and they have to come from somewhere. Where did all those BC's come from that were delivered to Monica?

I think that there are a lot of smaller ships in the reserve.

kzt wrote:Which is the 100X number I used above.

StealthSeeker wrote:

Kytheros wrote:There's no point in destroying the Reserve. Actually
trying to reactivate it would break the SLN, and the League.
Nothing in it has any meaningful combat value, much of it is old and obsolete, even by the standards of the SLN, no real maintenance has been performed, and there's jack all for crew.
It would be cheaper and faster to design and build an entire new fleet than to reactivate the SLN Reserve. You'd almost certainly end up with better ships if you started from scratch, too.

I would disagree. Filareta in his attack on Manticore was boasting of the size of the reserve fleet as in incentive for the Manticore fleet to surrender and not antagonize the SLN. The SLN itself is just now coming to the realization of how useless the reserve SD's really are, how aware do you think the public is of just how useless it is? Having it destroyed would sociologically remove the "club" of the reserve fleet from the minds of the SL general public, not just the SLN.

Second, SD's would be lousy at commerce raiding but the thousands of smaller ships, destroyers and cruisers, which would be much easier to bring out of mothballs, would work great for the commerce raiding that the new SLN "Lord Admiral" is suggesting for a war tactic. Those smaller ships may not be a match for any GA ship of similar size but the shear number of them scattered about the universe would be in hundreds of places that the GA would not have the ships to cover. How many destroyers could they crew with the people from one active SD or called up from a reserve?


Third, how much of a shock would it be to the SL and the SLN to have a bunch of "insignificant" LAC's "ghost" in, unseen, until they go active, and start destroying things. The facilities for building/reactivating ships would also have to be destroyed on the "pass through" by the LAC's. The carriers for the LAC's would drop them off outside sensor range, then jump to the opposite side of the elliptic to pick them up after they have passed through and destroyed everything.

Use those LAC's to hit them hard like they did to Haven in operation buttercup(?). Their heads will be spinning so hard they won't have a clue as to which end is up!

Destroy as much military infrastructure as you can but leave the civilian stuff alone. The GA might even try some commerce raiding of it's own. Capture as much shipping as they can. The SL is already severely short on transports, make it even worse. If the GA ship doesn't have a prize crew for the freighter, space everything from the freighter but food, clothing and farm equipment. We don't want them to think that we are trying to starve anyone to death or kill civilian crews.

Leave civilian stuff as untouched as possible. Make it clear that the attack is only on the military as a reprisal for their attack on Beowulf.

drothgery wrote:

kzt wrote:Which is the 100X number I used above.

Of course, given that Battle Fleet has less than 10X the active wall of Manticore* and gets the lion's share of the SLN's funding, I think it... highly unlikely... that Frontier Fleet has 100X the hulls of the RMN below the wall, or even 20X.

* They had more than 10X Manticore between the 1st and 2nd Battles of Manticore, but that was about the only time in since some point during the pre-first Havenite War buildup that that was the case.

munroburton wrote:
There is textev. In the big SLN admiralty meeting, near the end of MoH.

Which is why the redeployment of our active wall is designed to concentrate no fewer than an additional five hundred wallers on Tasmania - this time with complete logistical support and a powerful Frontier Fleet screen - within two and a half months. In three months' time, that total will reach six hundred. Which means we'll be able to dispatch a second wave, substantially larger and even more powerfully supported, against Manticore within a maximum of five months -

StealthSeeker wrote:
Thanks for the pointer, I looked it up and sure enough, there it was. Trying to put together another 600 ships with a whole bunch more support ships than Filateta had. But it was going to take several months to put it together. Considering the time line, and how far out they are, and the fact that many of the ships are still in transit to the collection point, do you think there is time enough to get orders to them and have them return in the small window available, to be part of the attack on Beowulf before the vote is taken?

Theemile wrote:

If no one (outside Rampajet) noticed 1200 ships moving around - who knows what the other ~1100 ships are really doing? We know the fleet of 100 is near Beowulf and Earth, and Sol's Hyperion One has to have it's own fleet stationed there, and the other SL bases are all inside the core, so not so distant from Earth. As far as we know, the other 1100 are sitting 10 light years from Beowulf, ready to strike.

kzt wrote:The US Navy says the US Navy has 276 vessels in the deployable battle force, with 20% deployed and 35% underway for training or other non deployment reasons today.

StealthSeeker wrote:Your number surprised me, I was sure I had read somewhere that it was a little over 400 ships. Wikipedia supplied the following information, 430 total ships, 272 deployable ships.