Last use for SL SD captured

Sigs wrote:what do you think will happen if the Mandarins try to use force on their member systems? Very good chance that the SLN will fragment quickly. What makes you think that the SLN naval personnel and marines are more loyal to the League than their home systems or even adoptive systems?

I think the SLN -- Battle Fleet in particular -- is almost a hereditary caste with a first loyalty to the family history of service in the SLN. It will take more than a bit of oppression to stir up mutiny.

Frontier Fleet is more likely to lose squadrons and task forces to secession, but more likely because the officers either turn conquistador or the local governor suborned them somehow.

The SLN is going to fragment, but not because of mutiny among the sailors. The SLN will fragment through Barratry (treason by officers) and survivors of battles looking for a safe haven.

Some of those former SLN units are going to turn conquistador or pirate. Systems need defense adequate to defeat SLN forces with Cataphracts/pods -- ten-thousand MDM pods or a million single drive system defense missiles. (in rough round numbers.)

PS:

Sigs wrote:If it happened in Maya it is likely to happen elsewhere and when you add the Mandarins becoming oppressors in the core systems the equation changes.

It will probably happen in the "hundred or so protectorates primed to secede" or something similar that Albercht Detweiler gloated about.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:I though Beowulf is almost in the middle of the League? This means they can reach any part of the League at will.

Define at will.

Look at the Map. It's BIG.

Earth is practically at the center of the League, while Beowulf is 40 LY off to one side it's big but its big for all sides not just the GA.

Weird Harold wrote:
I think the SLN -- Battle Fleet in particular -- is almost a hereditary caste with a first loyalty to the family history of service in the SLN. It will take more than a bit of oppression to stir up mutiny.

But many of the senior officers and even junior officers with a familial history with the Fleet are loyal to the family. Family history with the SLN is irrelevant if the SLN is in the process of killing or subjugating your family and home world.

Weird Harold wrote:
Frontier Fleet is more likely to lose squadrons and task forces to secession, but more likely because the officers either turn conquistador or the local governor suborned them somehow.

And either way, they become more of a problem to the League than Manticore. And more than that, if the GA politely points out what they expect in terms of behaviour from the new nations they can let those FF units form the militaries of the new nations.

Weird Harold wrote:The SLN is going to fragment, but not because of mutiny among the sailors. The SLN will fragment through Barratry (treason by officers) and survivors of battles looking for a safe haven.

Why not mutiny? So far we have senior officers and politicians leading the SLN from one disaster to another. There is appoint where people say enough is enough... especially if you have some marines on board who happen to not harbour great loyalty to the League to begin with.

Weird Harold wrote:

Some of those former SLN units are going to turn conquistador or pirate. Systems need defense adequate to defeat SLN forces with Cataphracts/pods -- ten-thousand MDM pods or a million single drive system defense missiles. (in rough round numbers.)

What do you expect to go to those systems? With some planning and luck the GA could cut up the majority of the remaining 1,800 to 1,900 SDs in active service which would leave a lot of BC's, CA's, CL's and DD's to cause problems, but those light combatants will be spread thin. Most systems will then need only enough firepower to push back a BC Squadron with screen at most.

Sigs wrote:What do you expect to go to those systems? With some planning and luck the GA could cut up the majority of the remaining 1,800 to 1,900 SDs in active service which would leave a lot of BC's, CA's, CL's and DD's to cause problems, but those light combatants will be spread thin. Most systems will then need only enough firepower to push back a BC Squadron with screen at most.

DD or SD, you need missile pods in range of an intruder. Single drive missiles don't have the range to cover an entire system. MDMs do.

You might think planning for a BC squadron is all you need but then you're screwed when a rogue SD shows up looking for a system to rule.

There are so many factors to consider that it is nearly impossible to detail the possibilities other than a generic "MDM, LAC and C3" installation; probably with FTL Comm included. (because, FTL comms will be on the civilian market as soon as the market finds out they can be had.)

Whatever a system decides as far as system defense, the basic parameters of inhabited planet(s) and stellar hyper-limit define the areas requiring defense. Who provides the defenses and how they are deployed is up to the system government; there are a LOT of options to compete with the GA.

Weird Harold wrote:
DD or SD, you need missile pods in range of an intruder. Single drive missiles don't have the range to cover an entire system. MDMs do.

They don't need the range to cover an entire system, they need the range to cover the most important area's of the system, the planet and industry. What's more, you don't need to cover every system that leaves the League all you need is a QRF covering several systems ready to respond. True it wont be able to assist in anti piracy but anyone trying to set up a little empire in the region will know that there are 5 or 10 SD(P)'s backed up by BC(P)'s and screen in the vicinity and will kick them out.

Important systems get coverage with the best and newest equipment, weapons and ships but only if all of it is in the hands and under control of GA crew's.

Weird Harold wrote:
You might think planning for a BC squadron is all you need but then you're screwed when a rogue SD shows up looking for a system to rule.

And the local QRF can be called up and punch out any SD that tries to set up shop if the local resources do not stop it.

Weird Harold wrote:There are so many factors to consider that it is nearly impossible to detail the possibilities other than a generic "MDM, LAC and C3" installation; probably with FTL Comm included. (because, FTL comms will be on the civilian market as soon as the market finds out they can be had.)

And who will operate those weapons if the system does not have trained military manpower?

And who is to guarantee that those weapons and designs wont be sold to everyone else?

And who is to guarantee that the MA wont be using those same weapons and equipment against the GA in a year or two?

If the League needs 5-10 years of heavy research to get technological parity and the MA needs 3-5 years to get parity why would you give them the technology so that they can instead spend those years trying to one up you in the technology department rather than trying to catch up to you and give you years to come up with new trick.

Weird Harold wrote: (because, FTL comms will be on the civilian market as soon as the market finds out they can be had.)

And if the GA decides to keep that technology to themselves the civilian market and all potential military adversaries would need to do the relevant research to get the technology.

Just because it might be inevitable that others will get similar technology does not mean the GA has to donate decades of research to their enemies.

Weird Harold wrote:Whatever a system decides as far as system defense, the basic parameters of inhabited planet(s) and stellar hyper-limit define the areas requiring defense. Who provides the defenses and how they are deployed is up to the system government; there are a LOT of options to compete with the GA.

And if the majority of systems decide to take options other than staying in the League, joining the RF or expecting the GA to provide their protection all the better.

If the GA have the opportunity to get some or most of the newly independent to find alternate means of protection all the better. The fact is though that those preferable means do not necessarily exist at the moment...they might in a decade or two but at the moment there are not that many options.

Weird Harold wrote:You might think planning for a BC squadron is all you need but then you're screwed when a rogue SD shows up looking for a system to rule.

No, but it is a reasonable threat model. It's an achievable standard. Trying to build a capability for every system to stop 4 BatRons with Apollo supported by 48 LAC squadrons in fleet defense mode is really way outside what a system without an existing military tradition and reasonable existing force structure can do in 5 years even with first line Haven sector tech.

Enormous massed missile pods of cataphract or better quality combined with appropriate fire control seems the only reasonable approach that can be generally deployed for planetary defense for those class of system and has serious limitations unless you have significant mobile forces and/or prospect of rapid relief.

Sigs wrote:They don't need the range to cover an entire system, they need the range to cover the most important area's of the system, the planet and industry.

What part of "too many variable to be specific" are you having problems with? Systems that don't have any outlying extraction or habitation don't need to cover the entire hyper limit those that do need the range to cover larger volumes. The point here is that any given volume can be covered by MDMs with fewer missiles. The GA doesn't have the production capacity to provide the numbers of missiles that single drive SDMs would require.

Sigs wrote:What's more, you don't need to cover every system that leaves the League all you need is a QRF covering several systems ready to respond. True it wont be able to assist in anti piracy but anyone trying to set up a little empire in the region will know that there are 5 or 10 SD(P)'s backed up by BC(P)'s and screen in the vicinity and will kick them out.

Sigs wrote:And the local QRF can be called up and punch out any SD that tries to set up shop if the local resources do not stop it.

And who is going to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed and resurrect those killed when the Conquistadors took over and then were kicked out? Like they say, "when seconds count, the Police are only minutes away."

Sigs wrote:Important systems get coverage with the best and newest equipment, weapons and ships but only if all of it is in the hands and under control of GA crew's.

And just where is the GA going to come up with the manpower to man all of the defensive installations that will be established -- be ultra-conservative and and estimate a quarter of the League will sign mutual defense treaties, or 500 systems? That's going to take something like Half-a-Billion personnel!

Providing Training Cadre or importing locals into GA tech schools will strain GA resources as it is. Trying to garrison every allied system is unworkable.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote: (because, FTL comms will be on the civilian market as soon as the market finds out they can be had.)

Just because it might be inevitable that others will get similar technology does not mean the GA has to donate decades of research to their enemies.

Who said anything about "donate?" "Provide" isn't the same as "Donate" and the only time I've talked about FTL separately the word I've used is "SELL." FTL comm is a potential revenue stream for GA members (and other nations with FTL comms like the Anderman Empire and Mayans.) Anyone with FTL comm capability has a choice:

Join in the FTL Comm boom times.

OR

Play "dog in the manger" and lose all that revenue trying to keep their version secret.

kzt wrote:Enormous massed missile pods of cataphract or better quality combined with appropriate fire control seems the only reasonable approach that can be generally deployed for planetary defense for those class of system and has serious limitations unless you have significant mobile forces and/or prospect of rapid relief.

Who going to be building those massed pods of Cataphracts? Not the GA, I think. They're currently having trouble making the missiles they use without trying to make millions (or billions over multiple systems) of the enemies' lesser tech. Who's going to train systems on whatever tech goes along with massed Cataphract pods? The GA doesn't have large numbers of personnel trained on those systems.

IOW, other people can provide whatever tech a system wants or can afford and it won't affect what the GA has to provide.

The GA can provide a fairly wide range of tech levels, but almost everything but MDMs and modern LACs are obsolete surplus. Haven can probably afford to keep it's old-style production lines open for foreign military sales, but Manticore and Grayson would have to build double the production capacity they need to fill their own requirements -- not a good idea in the near future.

For some obsolete tech, the GA can just provide licenses, plans and samples and let successor states build their own.

But every system is unique and what gets provided, or not, is the GA's spies' and diplomats' decision.

Every core system has enormous industrial capability. They can build them themselves thanks to the magic of the Honorverse, where Beowulf is going to be going from a secret RMN concept study for a system defense network to having produced a fully deployed and working system in under 6 months, using completely different fabrication systems, completely different industrial suppliers and having never produced a single component of that system previously.