SLN Logistics

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:I would argue emergency evacuation of ships is not an issue, either you win and have all the time in the world to patch up a ship or you lose and scuttle the ship rather than risk losing a repair ship trying to fix it or evacuate it.

You can trivially fit a DD into a standard commercial freighter. IIRC, you can just fit it in sideways. Up through BC it's not a big deal to get them out, as you can fit them in a modified freighter. DN and above are not so easy.

And this is obviously why USN CNVs routinely include heavy lift salvage ships like the MV Blue Marlin; to carry home damaged or disabled destroyers and cruisers.

Oh wait, no they aren't.
If the damaged ship can be stabilized with its own damage control (or assistance from other warships), and the area made safe, a repair or transport ship can be sent to handle the damaged ship. But it'd slow down the military force, and put a very vulnerable ship in the line of fire, to drag around salvage/repair ships on every major op. (Though the Russian navy does seem to routines deploy with a tug for their long distance deployments - but those are still to pretty low risk areas)

Similarly in the Honorverse we've never seen a warship get external repair, or get scooped up to evacuate, in a system with active hostilities.
Either you win, and can call up resourced from your (hopefully nearby) fleet train (see HMS Hexapuma - repaired in place in Monica so she could return under her own power), or you lose and damaged ships have to get away on their own, abandon and scuttle, or surrender.

It would be an extremely rare situation where you lost the fight, but were left unmolested long enough to dock a destroyer or cruiser with your modified freighter to evacuate it. Even if the freighter could keep it's wedge up the warship would have to drop theirs. Normally that's a sign of surrender, but I'm pretty sure that if you're trying to load it for transport the combo is still fair game for attack. So you've got a non-accelerating large docking maneuver that would be taking place under fire. Seems like a great way to get even more of the warship's crew killed; and possibly the freighter's to boot.

Not to mention that if the ship-transporter if close enough to grab a warship whose drive is damaged that means you were dragging this big slow vulnerable target with you into direct combat - where there's an excellent chance it could get damaged or destroyed. I think there's good reason we've never seen anybody try that in the Honorverse -- not under fire; which you would be in a losing retreat...

The last time the USN lost a ship in combat was 1945. This has lead to some unfortunate patterns of behavior, like this:
Acquisition Chief: LCS Program 'Broke' the Navy

There is avhance that the navy out sources their logistics lei ties, so they are not available targets.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:I would argue emergency evacuation of ships is not an issue, either you win and have all the time in the world to patch up a ship or you lose and scuttle the ship rather than risk losing a repair ship trying to fix it or evacuate it.

You can trivially fit a DD into a standard commercial freighter. IIRC, you can just fit it in sideways. Up through BC it's not a big deal to get them out, as you can fit them in a modified freighter. DN and above are not so easy.

So you have a damaged warship that cannot leave the battlefield under it's own power and you have to retreat so your solution is to bring a defenceless freighter to evacuate it? What happens when I blow your freighter too? Now instead of loosing a warship you lost a freighter as well.



Why would Hexapuma, Warlock and Fearless have to repair enough to return under their own power if it were just easier to put them in a freighter and sail away to a big fully equipped yard?

Sigs wrote:So you have a damaged warship that cannot leave the battlefield under it's own power and you have to retreat so your solution is to bring a defenceless freighter to evacuate it? What happens when I blow your freighter too? Now instead of loosing a warship you lost a freighter as well.



Why would Hexapuma, Warlock and Fearless have to repair enough to return under their own power if it were just easier to put them in a freighter and sail away to a big fully equipped yard?

Plot. Plus the whole scale of the ships didn't really get worked out then.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:So you have a damaged warship that cannot leave the battlefield under it's own power and you have to retreat so your solution is to bring a defenceless freighter to evacuate it? What happens when I blow your freighter too? Now instead of loosing a warship you lost a freighter as well.



Why would Hexapuma, Warlock and Fearless have to repair enough to return under their own power if it were just easier to put them in a freighter and sail away to a big fully equipped yard?

Plot. Plus the whole scale of the ships didn't really get worked out then.

Or maybe there is another reason?

You wouldn't even need a specially designed freighter to hold a destroyer, we saw that in one of those Honorverse side books, where a much younger Lieutenant (Commander wasnt it?) Honor Harrington, commanding the Hawkwing in Silesia was approached by the Ballroom. And then essentially deployed to the target system aboard a freighter didn't she?


Specially designed freighters were used to deploy Torches frigates, but that may have been an issue with frigates being considerably smaller than even a destroyer.


However, I must agree with Jonathon and Sigs here kzt, a general, run of the mill civilian freighter isn't something that routinely deploys with warships. The Joint Navy Military Transport Command we saw in In Enemy Hands, is a possibility, but unlikely.

Generic Fleet Train freighters are jam packed with foodstuffs, spare parts, servicing equipment, medical supplies, and/or ammunition. The Fleet Train ships could be used to safely 'pick up' escape pods, but I don't see them reserving enough space to be able to load ships below waller.


And found a small snippet that directly mentions fleet train, just prior to Republican First Fleet pre-deploying for the Case Red Alpha plan.

War of Honor, Ch 40 wrote:As soon as this conference ended, he and the newly designated First Fleet would depart the Haven System and head for his new station in the SXR-136-23 System. It had never received a name to replace its catalog designation because the thoroughly useless red giant had absolutely nothing, not even any planets, to attract anyone to it. It did, however, offer a handy anchor around which to park a fleet safely out of sight. And it just happened to be located less than forty light-years northwest of Trevor's Star.

The logistics ships to support First Fleet were already in place, orbiting SXR-136's dim central fires with sufficient supplies and spares to sustain the entire fleet on station for up to six months. If it turned out to be necessary to leave First Fleet there for longer than that, the fleet train would detach ships in relays to bring back what was needed.

Bolding for emphasis. We also know that Fleet train includes hospital ships (the repeated reference to how Fritz Montoya belongs on one of those stretching all the way back to OBS), ammunition ships like the Volcano. In the RMN, they'd be supported in war-time by the JNMTC's because those are very fast in hyper (for freighters), and actually have basic sidewalls and point defense which puts them above the generic non-Silesian merchies.

Sigs wrote:So you have a damaged warship that cannot leave the battlefield under it's own power and you have to retreat so your solution is to bring a defenceless freighter to evacuate it? What happens when I blow your freighter too? Now instead of loosing a warship you lost a freighter as well.



Why would Hexapuma, Warlock and Fearless have to repair enough to return under their own power if it were just easier to put them in a freighter and sail away to a big fully equipped yard?

To be fair I believe, though I'm not going to go back and try to find the quote, that for Hexapuma the possibility of sending a transporter out from Manticore to haul her home was mentioned.
But the decision was made to patch her up enough that she could return under her own power and be honored as she came through the Junction.

Jonathan_S wrote:To be fair I believe, though I'm not going to go back and try to find the quote, that for Hexapuma the possibility of sending a transporter out from Manticore to haul her home was mentioned.
But the decision was made to patch her up enough that she could return under her own power and be honored as she came through the Junction.

The time need for the transporter ship to go and pickup the Hexapuma and take her back home was longer then what it would take then for her to simply return home under her own power.

pnakasone wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:To be fair I believe, though I'm not going to go back and try to find the quote, that for Hexapuma the possibility of sending a transporter out from Manticore to haul her home was mentioned.
But the decision was made to patch her up enough that she could return under her own power and be honored as she came through the Junction.

The time need for the transporter ship to go and pickup the Hexapuma and take her back home was longer then what it would take then for her to simply return home under her own power.

Probably not - it took 3 T-months for Ericsson and the other repair ships to patch Hexapuma and Warlock up enough to limp home. (And it states Warlock only got patched up because "repairing her alpha nodes had cost less than the Navy would be able to reclaim from her hull when she was broken up."

I'm pretty sure that it's not a 3 T-month trip from Manticore out to Monica with a ship transporter (should one be available). So it seems, to me, that either they chose to delay to allow Hexapuma and Warlock to return under their own power and be honored by home fleet or there weren't any ship transporters available close enough to be sent over to haul them home.
Also it implies that the repairs to Warlock's drive was also no more expensive than paying a transport to go out and haul her home for scrapping - otherwise they'd probably have done that instead of the repairs.