lightningstar519 wrote:While podnoughts and LACs (along with Apollo) are my favourite aspects of space navies in the Honorverse, I can't help but think that Manticore's merchant shipping was left vulnerable to piracy, especially given the fact that merchant ships were operating far beyond the Star Empire's borders,.
Hello lightningstar, welcome to the forum
First question, just how vulnerable was shipping? From all accounts, the RMMS was massive. So statistically most shipping must have been safe. The responses to piracy must have been proportional to the problem itself, especially those whose cost was footed by for-profit companies. For those, it might have been cheaper to buy insurance to pay off ransoms and the indemnifications it might owe. Unlike most options, insurance applies to all ships at all times.
Some simple tactics and safeguards could make Manticoran merchant ships a lot harder to seize. For instance, a typical pirate attack involves the merchant ship being attacked by a pirate frigate or destroyer, or even a converted merchantman. Why not give the merchant ships the means to defend themselves against light combatants, rather than wait for the Navy?
That makes them armed merchantmen, which puts them in a completely different category. They may not be welcome in all systems and governments, for starters. It's likely that almost all independent, single-system polities and even the Silesian Confederecy would have accepted armed Manticoran ships, but what if the League didn't? They League already didn't like Manticoran shipping, so giving them an excuse to bar them from League space would be a bad idea. This would apply not just to the League official members, but to all OFS-controlled worlds too.
Having a fleet with different capabilities means logistics gets complicated. You can't use an armed merchantman on a route where any port forbids them, so either you accept shipping with unarmed ships in those routes or you reroute. The latter option may be cost-ineffective.
Before anyone suggests undeclared weapons, there's a risk to that: if discovered, such a ship could be legally impounded and the crew legally detained. And you couldn't use insurance to pay for their release either, because insurance wouldn't cover those undeclared weapons. The shipping company would need to foot the legal defence out of their own resources.
Some of the measures I can think of are:
Missile pods tractored to the hull of merchant ships - They don't need to be Apollo missiles or even MDMs, but a missile pod designed for merchant ships will go a long way in keeping shipping safe. That's the beauty of pods; there's no refit or yard time required.
Pods have another advantage: they can be offloaded easily. So on those routes I envisioned above, the ships could offload their pods before heading to a port that didn't accept armed Manticoran shipping, then pick up a new load on the next system. It wouldn't even be difficult if the shipping goes in both directions, since the ports on either side of the unwilling port would always have missile pods being dropped off.
The difficulty here is that those two systems need to be very friendly to hold on to those pods, plus provide security by themselves, since there will be ships arriving unarmed. Pirates would know that.
Another problem is that you have civilians in control of missiles. Granted, a considerable chunk of the merchant crew were retired Navy, who probably have some combat experience (especially now in the post-war scenario) and who wouldn't panic and shoot down a friendly ship with transponder problems. But not all would. More importantly, they open themselves to being charged with piracy themselves: if the local pirates are friendly with the corrupt local government, the crew of a civilian ship that fired on a raider would likely be detained and could get executed before any relief came from Manticore.
Anti-piracy LACs - Quoting David Weber from an infodump
[-snip-]
Manticore can easily whip up an LAC model for anti-piracy patrols that can be carried in a freighter's hold or on the hull if the owners don't want to sacrifice the cargo space. There's no need for a battlecruiser-level graser, like on the Shrikes, a scaled-down version of the Katana can easily defend merchant ships from most pirates one-on-one, with a wing of three to six able to disable or destroy pirate destroyers or anything below.
LACs had existed for centuries before the Shrikes and they were ferried from system to system either in the bellies of freighters or tractored to the hull. So you wouldn't need a dedicated model, an old design might suffice.
Or it might not. One of the biggest advantages of the Shrikes, Ferrets and Katanas, aside from their weaponry, was their
endurance. An old-style LAC couldn't operate very far from a good base of operations and freighters make poor bases. It's doubtful an old-style LAC could even carry its crew aboard on a long-haul hyperspace stint.
Either way, I don't think LACs would be a good idea. First, they may have a very poor reaction time when trouble presents itself. If the LAC crew is not aboard or the LAC is inside a cargo bay, launching it could take 10 minutes or more. If the freighter was ambushed by a pirate lying doggo, they may not have 10 minutes. Second, you need to embark not just the crews for the LACs, but also maintenance personnel, which increases the crew size aboard a freighter. Third, LAC duty on freighters would not be a very attractive option for the military service members and would probably be seen as punishment duty.
Pocket LAC carriers - What has been made clear is that the greater flexibility of LAC platforms has made destroyers and cruisers inefficient for missile defense, freeing them up for escort and raiding duties. With the expansion of Manticore's borders by conquering Silesia and annexing the Talbott Quadrant, lighter ships will be in greater demand which I believe calls for the development of a pocket LAC Carrier for the SDFs. With a squadron of light cruisers and destroyers as escorts, a smaller carrier (that can service and transport around 40 to 50 LACs) can be used for system defense (backed by Mycroft), convoy security and force projection easier than penny packet patrols and pickets.
A smaller carrier (escort carrier, CVE, though CLACs aren't CV, CVL or CVF) is an interesting concept. Without going into the merits of such a ship type, the problem with the above suggestion is simply that it's a warship in the first place. It's far easier for the RMN to build and crew a destroyer than a carrier. And destroyers and light cruisers are far more indicated for convoy duty than a carrier, plus the same ship can serve more functions. The RMN does prefer non-specific ships.
Small carriers may have other purposes, but I don't anti-piracy is it. They wouldn't be efficient for escorting and they wouldn't be needed in most Manticoran systems, since a fixed base can house and launch bigger LAC wings.
Naval auxilaries and mercenaries - With the expansion of the Manticoran Empire, they have a larger population base leading to a larger pool for their armed forces. Rather than training the new forces exclusively to serve in the navies, Manticore can easily use retired servicemen to train volunteers in the Talbott Quadrant system for their SDFs or to serve in anti-piracy LACs with merchant ships.
There have been very few professional mercenaries outfits in Manticore, apart from the Volsung Mercenaries in 'Call to Arms', but with the major wars cooling down and the hunt for the Mesan Alignment on, private contractors might become relevant again (I can see Captain Zilwicki and Victor Cachat slapping together a mercenary outfit on the fly in the tradition of Admiral Naismith and the Dendarii Mercenaries whlle peeling the onion). The good mercenary outfits could be hired by larger Manticoran shipping lines Like Hauptman for security.
Private security outfits could be a good idea. They could buy decommissioned RMN ships and install civilian-grade weaponry. Even older destroyer hulls could be useful and the RMN had them by the hundreds. Like you said, it could also provide jobs for demobilised service members.
I just don't know if protecting Manticoran shipping from piracy would be cost-effective. Far more likely, such mercenary groups would sell their services to full planetary governments who didn't have a good Navy of their own and now don't have Frontier Fleet "protection". The mercenary fees are probably too high for the shipping companies to afford themselves. Plus, the RMN is still present to protect Manticoran shipping. Hauptman has enough influence to make the RMN escort his and other ships anywhere where piracy is really troublesome, essentially for free. Even if he can afford the mercenary fees, you can't beat RMN's price.
