Hi Daryl,
While current experience is obvious, just how backward is the whole TQ, when several, possibly the majority of member systems had their own navies including heavy cruisers?
Given how far Grayson had to go, being a century or two out of date yet matching the RMN in a few short years, I expect the TQ has been closing the gap faster than some have allowed, granted some being far ahead of others.
I doubt the 48 SD's being so easily divided by the 16 member systems is by chance, and having 3 in each system would help Henri Krietzmann among other quadrant and system leaders sleep at night having 3 such nominally fierce scarecrows in each system.
While the FF ships [16 BC's, 12 CA's, 23 CL's, 18 DD's] ought be added to the local forces [a 50% increase in hyper units?], there's also the possibility of using them or the FF captured with Filaretta [32 BC's, 30 CL's, 48 DD's] as 'Trojan horses' possibly manned jointly by all GA navies with a few improvements to fire control [one F/C channel per pod], communications [ ghost rider RD's and FTL.comms via a possibly towed or tractored Hermes buoys] and pods, to check out all the various protectorates suspected of having "Firebrand" etc types visits, then taking whatever action might be needed immediately, while an escorted 'newsie' might go 'report' quickly.
Lacoon 2 seems to demand some sort of local intel survey, possibly using SLN db and 'newsie ships' transponders picked up by MMM freighters over the years besides those picked up in Spindle and the SKM that the RMN could use, including the up to date records aboard the captured SLN ships and all those of the newsies arriving to check on Crandall and Filaretta etc.
So the technique might not be that strange or out of the box to the Lacoon 2 planners as some might suppose, and thus available when Pat Givens has to find out quickly which protectorates are probably expecting RMN help soon.
The combined total of 179 ex-FF ships is probably more than 20% of the protectorates, enough to quickly cover the suspected ones even in pairs etc, if the GA weren't to use other ships including 'neutral' freighters for the survey.
After that, there's the shells to be sampled, along with Beowulf's neighbors, then the rest of the core...
So these ex-FF could prove pretty useful too.
L
Daryl wrote:I was going to start a campaign to stop bestiality, necrophilia, and sadism but was told I'd just be beating a dead horse.
On a marginally more serious note I believe that part of the reason this topic won't die is that if you had just one of the Solarian SDs here and now you would be king of the world. People can't accept that in the Honorverse they are just useless white elephants, despite RFC patiently explaining it over and over.
There are many real world examples of how gifting sophisticated military technology to an undeveloped nation has ended with no functionality in a short time. Without an appropriate industrial base and military support ethos, stuff turns into junk rapidly.
