Fate of the Solarian League

Hasek wrote:Just because the yards exist doesn't mean the new owners are willing to sell, a very large number of these systems are going to have no yard capacity at all

How long is it going to take for Manticore to rebuild their yards from nothing, including rebuilding their entire industrial infrastructure? These systems have full industrial infrastructures. So how long do you think it takes for them to build new yards?

n7axw wrote:The textev I've seen suggests that by mutual consent, no Manty upgrades were used by the Beowulfers because of concern that those upgrades would fall into the SLN's less than pristine hands.

Don

I have posted this before. Bold is my emphasis.

CoG Chapter 2 wrote:The Biological Survey Corps had asked the government of Torch to provide them with a battalion for service on Parmley Station once it became clear that their plans for the station simply needed more forces that the BSC itself could provide. For all its wealth and power, Beowulf was still a one-star system and a member of the Solarian League. While the Beowulf System Defense Force was unusually large and powerful for a League member system, thanks to the existence of the Beowulf Terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, it had never needed—or maintained—a large army. Instead, it had concentrated on maintaining one whose quality was excellent, and its modest size had allowed it to be picky about the personnel it recruited and then equip them with the very best. Given the heightened political tensions of recent years, Beowulf had increased its military spending considerably, but the priority was to fully modernize its naval forces first. At least for the time being, Beowulf’s available ground and marine forces remained sparse.

While it does not say they are upgrading to Manticore tech. Given that they have excising against Manticore. What are they modernizing to?

Have fun,
T2M

Hasek wrote:Hi guys first post!

The SL has ~1780 full member governments (any multi-systems members?) and about 2-300 OFS controlled systems. My guess would be that within 20 years all the OFS systems are "gone". that alone would be the greatest balkanization in human history and even if only 10% of the SL goes with it that's another 200ish new nations.

What I recall is that the text says there are 1780 systems in the League, not governments. David has said that there are several multi-system governments in the League.

While the SL Member's all have a lot of autonomy they're still a unified economy with all the cross-connections of 700 years of open borders (Think the EU after 700 years) also while they all have their own SDF's the SLN was the real provider of security, if Battle Fleet as the front line of SL defense had the ingrained belief that they would never be actually used how bad do you think the SDF's habits are going to be?

David has indicated that the larger SDFs are in considerably better shape than the SLN. Some League members actually sent observers to the Haven Quadrant to report on technological advances during the two wars with Haven, and actually listened to the reports.

The problem is that there are only a few SDFs with anything bigger than a few old-style LACs.

What i would expect to see is within a generation 2-400 or possible more then a thousand new nations are going to be formed in a environment of complete economic political and military chaos. Many of the former OFS systems will become outright pirate kingdoms of some sort. even the former full members will have serious defense issues.

Possible. There has been quite a bit of speculation here about that in the past, and several past posters agree with you.

The great question i see most people missing (and hasn't been mentioned in the books) is where are the shipyards?
For example the US can build CVN's but only one company in a single yard can build them, if the US broke up only Newport News, Virginia can actually build them. So if/when the SL breaks up where are these new nations going to get new hardware?

People aren't missing that question. There has been fierce speculation about that on the forum. But it hasn't been an issue here because we simply don't know the answer.

However, there are a lot of people here who think that most of the Core systems could create a naval shipyard relatively quickly. Their technological base is not that different from Manticore, and they have larger populations and comparable resources to build a navy of their own. The only question is how quickly the recent Manticoran war tech is developed. Now that they know the tech is possible, it is likely that a number of research groups across the SL will be able to reproduce it.

Which is part of the reason David has shown us that Manticore is already planning for an environment where the tech is ubiquitous.

Thought of an interesting historical analog of a very self-confident superpower, (and a notoriously NIH, overconfident and arrogant military branch) and coming off crushing multiple opponents had to confront the fact that their doctrine, equipment and training were wrong and as a result they were getting their asses kicked by some farmers who 20 years ago didn't even have a military.

The analog I'm thinking of was USAF and US Naval Aviation getting their asses kicked by the North Vietnamese Migs.

USAF initially lost air-air fights against Mig-21 at 3:1 (this is 3 USAF fighters per Mig), while USN fighters were lost at 1:1. This was not at all how USAF had planned their next war.

https://books.google.com/books?id=7t-XP ... am&f=false

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us

And here I'd guessed that you were talking Turkey, 1908!

HTM

phillies wrote:My reference is to 1952 and the Egyptian Colonels' Coup.

I think that a lot of the OFS Gov. and Commissioners along with bunches of they dictatorial regimes the OFS has propped up or just been the protection for are going to survive. Maya is going this way on purpose and with a lot of planning but if each of the OFS or OFS supported people have a very firm hold on their own planets, they are going to be difficult to dislodge.

Local rebellions without the assistance of an outside power, when you are facing the kinds of force and weapons ratios we have seen are going to be bloody, long and essentialy a war of attrition if the rebels don't suceed quickly.
Particularly if the FF survivors (of conflictes with the GM naval units) may decide that holding a particular system for the "present government" is a really smart thing to do, particularly if it becomes clear enough (and soon enough) that the GA is NOT looking to take over and if they don't try to take war to the GA, the GA isn't comming to get them.

This is going to be a long and bloody process. We just have to wait to see where RFC takes us.

n7axw wrote:Hi Hasek,

Welcome. Belly up to the virtual bar for your favorite bverage. First one's in the the house.

This discussion seems to presume that those yards manufactuing warships are goung to be there. I don't think so. They are going to be taken out by GA raids fairly early on the fight. Civilian yards might be left untouched.

Don

at which point the civilian yards are confiscated by the government to build warships. no matter what, many of those civilian yards are going to be building warships anyways. Either for the SLN or for the system SDF. If the GA wants to stop all warship construction, they are going to have to pretty much take out all of the yards and keep sending in scouts to check on any rebuilt ones.

Zakharra wrote:at which point the civilian yards are confiscated by the government to build warships. no matter what, many of those civilian yards are going to be building warships anyways. Either for the SLN or for the system SDF. If the GA wants to stop all warship construction, they are going to have to pretty much take out all of the yards and keep sending in scouts to check on any rebuilt ones.

In the Honorverse, building even light warships requires very significant upgrades to a civilian yard, and building capital ships considerably more than that. Which is why only a handful of systems both inside the League and outside it have any capital ship building capacity at all.

drothgery wrote:

Zakharra wrote:at which point the civilian yards are confiscated by the government to build warships. no matter what, many of those civilian yards are going to be building warships anyways. Either for the SLN or for the system SDF. If the GA wants to stop all warship construction, they are going to have to pretty much take out all of the yards and keep sending in scouts to check on any rebuilt ones.

In the Honorverse, building even light warships requires very significant upgrades to a civilian yard, and building capital ships considerably more than that. Which is why only a handful of systems both inside the League and outside it have any capital ship building capacity at all.

Yes, but what people have been saying is that the Core worlds have the capability of doing that conversion, or even building entire new shiphyards for warships.

Hi thinkstoomuch,

Here is my textev. It is from that scene in MOH where Givens is informing Caperelli of Filereta's pending attack; info that comes through a Beowulf black conduit.

"Beowulf was the only League member which had been routinely kept up to date on Manticorian military developments. The Beowulf System-Defense Force and the Royal Navy had been quietly in agreement that it would be in both services' best interests if Beowulf didn't suddenly begin introducing Manticore's new tech goodies into its own ships, where they might find their way into the SLN's less than pristine hands..."

(Shrug) There it is... Make of what you will.

Don