Commerce raiding

Relax wrote:Partially true and why this discussion is fairly long. How many convoy systems are there in reality? You can't grab em in hyper9theoretically you can) So, grav waves as shown in books, but why bother they are slow and they had plenty of RHN Sultan BC's and they knew RMN shipping only had DD's/CL's still.

Based off the very scant evidence we have it looks like once war was declared convoys might have gotten bigger (and hence presumably fewer) but with more powerful escorts; so at least some convoys had CAs.

And in fact IEH explicitly says that was happening in at least part of the combat zone -- though this is well into the war, right after Trevor's Star was captured

In Enemy Hands wrote:local shipping patterns have been materially altered to consolidate our escort capability over the past months. We're sending out more ships per convoy, but the total number of convoys—and thus potential targets—has been cut in half, which means, theoretically, at least, that the available escort strength per convoy has been doubled

There are two convoys we have good detail on (I discount the diplomatic mission to Grayson in HotQ as its escort strength was set more by diplomatic needs than actual defensive ones).

From SVW we have the pre-war convoy to Grendelsbane that Captain Helen Zilwicki died defending: 5 ships protected by only 2 CLs and 3 DDs. Then from IEH we have the mid-war convoy Honor was captured defending: 20 ships protected by 6 CAs.

Still, even CAs can't stand up to similar numbers of BCs. Though they can potentially delay them long enough for the convoy to scatter -- and as we saw at Adler even deploying BCs to (temporarily) retake systems doesn't necessarily let them get a convoy's merchies when it visits that system (even if it lets them punch out part of its escort)

Sigs wrote:The SLN completed the same task with BC's, CL's and DD's yet the RHN needed BB's.

(context: picketing systems)

A big difference here is the quality of the system being picketed / oppressed in the first place. The SLN FF was picketing poor Verge systems that couldn't do anything against a destroyer in orbit launching KEWs. There was also no one interested in taking those systems in the first place. If nothing else, that would have involved them in a conflict with the SL and almost no one would have wanted that.

The systems the PN was picketing were conquests in a relatively rich sector of the Verge: the Haven Sector. Some of those had navies of their own, of which some may have driven away and could come back. The planetary governments in exile would have been lobbying for the liberation of their systems and they were in fact finding receptive ears in the Alliance.

Moreover, the PRH depended on the most recent conquests for their influx of cash, whereas the SL did not depend on the OFS money. The majority of that went to corruption and the transstellars, not the League government itself. That is to say, the SL had a much longer runway if it started losing systems than the PRH and had many more systems, scattered all over the Verge.

The SKM spent about 50 years building up the RMN and then spent a decade or two building up the Manticore Alliance and the forward bases. At no point in the books are the Havenite officer corps before the comitee took over described as absolutely incompetent and blind. They would have had to see that it wont be a simple one system offensive but rather it would be a dragged out war and simply the process of taking a system would require a fleet train.

They were somewhat blinded by the doctrine that was accepted by everyone at the time. They fought like the SLN taught and that included leaping from system to system to minimise your logistics. So all the fleet train that they needed would have been for this.

They were also settled in their own ways and between political subterfuge and overwhelming victories at the time of their choosing, they must have become complacent.

However, the biggest problem they must have faced was competent manpower. Yes, you can load freighters and navy auxiliaries with equipment and dumb workers to move stuff along, but a fleet train is more than that. Without a repair ship and for damage that isn't a plug-and-play replacement, the expedition would be in trouble. That's another reason why they never ventured too far from known bases, which creates a vicious cycle of not needing large fleet trains.

What was the goal with the attack on Hancock and Yeltsin? Attack and then win or lose withdraw? If the RHN had won the battle of Yeltsin would they withdraw? or would they have tankers to refuel the warships, ammunition ships to rearm the fleet and repair ships to try and bring any damaged warships to a serviceable status to be sent home and assist in preparing minor battle damage?

Those were to deny the Alliance the assets in the first place. For In both cases, I actually think the PN would have withdrawn, even if they had won. In Hancock's case, either they destroyed the facilities there (in which case the system is now valueless) or they captured it. If they did capture it, then the Alliance would be forced to respond in force because leaving the facilities in the Peep hands would have been strategically unacceptable. The PN would have had to win at Hancock with such an overwhelming victory that it took few losses and could hold against a counterattack, neither of which were in the plan.

In the Yeltsin system, they didn't have the occupation forces so they wouldn't have stayed. Both Third and Fourth Yieltsin were designed to take out the picket forces that the PN admiralty thought was there (in Third's case) and the yards that had begun springing up in Fourth's.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:In the Yeltsin system, they didn't have the occupation forces so they wouldn't have stayed. Both Third and Fourth Yieltsin were designed to take out the picket forces that the PN admiralty thought was there (in Third's case) and the yards that had begun springing up in Fourth's.

I think that they would have stayed after Fourth Yeltsin; but at Masada, not Yeltsin. One important aspect of the battle was to free the Masadans from the occupying force and give Haven a very motivated counterforce to Grayson.

tlb wrote:I think that they would have stayed after Fourth Yeltsin; but at Masada, not Yeltsin. One important aspect of the battle was to free the Masadans from the occupying force and give Haven a very motivated counterforce to Grayson.

I don't see how that helps with the war. The Masadans don't have any ship any more, so they can't affect Grayson. Even if they did have raiders left, a single cruiser division would be able to defend against those, and at this time the GSN had plenty of capable ships left.

The PN giving the Masadans more ships like they had done is probably counter-productive, especially after it was shown that those nuts didn't have experience handling the ships. Giving them ships is effectively the same as just losing the ship to the PN.

Ditto for using the Masadans as crew. The PN was already losing on personnel quality compared to the Alliance and to Manticore in particular. Adding a lot of zealots who can't be controlled and don't have the education lowers the average even further.

That leaves using the Endicott system as a base, something Haven had wanted. But it would have taken years of investment to do that, something that I don't think the PN could afford right now (neither in money nor in time).

tlb wrote:I think that they would have stayed after Fourth Yeltsin; but at Masada, not Yeltsin. One important aspect of the battle was to free the Masadans from the occupying force and give Haven a very motivated counterforce to Grayson.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't see how that helps with the war. The Masadans don't have any ship any more, so they can't affect Grayson. Even if they did have raiders left, a single cruiser division would be able to defend against those, and at this time the GSN had plenty of capable ships left.

The PN giving the Masadans more ships like they had done is probably counter-productive, especially after it was shown that those nuts didn't have experience handling the ships. Giving them ships is effectively the same as just losing the ship to the PN.

Ditto for using the Masadans as crew. The PN was already losing on personnel quality compared to the Alliance and to Manticore in particular. Adding a lot of zealots who can't be controlled and don't have the education lowers the average even further.

That leaves using the Endicott system as a base, something Haven had wanted. But it would have taken years of investment to do that, something that I don't think the PN could afford right now (neither in money nor in time).

Then please explain this component of Operation Dagger, from Flag in Exile:

Chapter 23 wrote:He'd strayed badly out of position on the approach to Masada, and the computers ruled that the Grayson battlecruisers protecting Endicott had managed a successful interception. They'd taken heavy losses from Chernov's escorts, but not heavy enough to keep them from killing both his troop transports and four of his five freighters full of weapons.
Theisman sighed. He wasn't at all happy about arming a planet full of religious fanatics—especially when he knew from personal experience what they were capable of—but if he had to do it, he preferred to do it right.

If they are transporting troops, then they must plan to stick around for some time; even if it is just to train soldiers in the use of the transported weapons.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:They were somewhat blinded by the doctrine that was accepted by everyone at the time. They fought like the SLN taught and that included leaping from system to system to minimise your logistics. So all the fleet train that they needed would have been for this.

They were also settled in their own ways and between political subterfuge and overwhelming victories at the time of their choosing, they must have become complacent.

However, the biggest problem they must have faced was competent manpower. Yes, you can load freighters and navy auxiliaries with equipment and dumb workers to move stuff along, but a fleet train is more than that. Without a repair ship and for damage that isn't a plug-and-play replacement, the expedition would be in trouble. That's another reason why they never ventured too far from known bases, which creates a vicious cycle of not needing large fleet trains.

What was the goal with the attack on Hancock and Yeltsin? Attack and then win or lose withdraw? If the RHN had won the battle of Yeltsin would they withdraw? or would they have tankers to refuel the warships, ammunition ships to rearm the fleet and repair ships to try and bring any damaged warships to a serviceable status to be sent home and assist in preparing minor battle damage?

Those were to deny the Alliance the assets in the first place. For In both cases, I actually think the PN would have withdrawn, even if they had won. In Hancock's case, either they destroyed the facilities there (in which case the system is now valueless) or they captured it. If they did capture it, then the Alliance would be forced to respond in force because leaving the facilities in the Peep hands would have been strategically unacceptable. The PN would have had to win at Hancock with such an overwhelming victory that it took few losses and could hold against a counterattack, neither of which were in the plan.

In the Yeltsin system, they didn't have the occupation forces so they wouldn't have stayed. Both Third and Fourth Yieltsin were designed to take out the picket forces that the PN admiralty thought was there (in Third's case) and the yards that had begun springing up in Fourth's.

A fleet train also needs the ability to transfer that ammo, supplies, fuel, spare parts, etc. in the absence of proper port facilities. That may or may not include underway replenishment, but at a bare minimum must include the ability to transfer in a sheltered area or set up the necessary port facilities to facilitate the transfer.

It doesn't do you any good to send a ship full of fuel if it needs a fueling pier to unload and there's no such pier where the fleet is.

In some ways this is probably easier for a space navy. They don't have to worry about wind and waves tossing the ships around while they attempt to transfer materials. OTOH the lack of gravity might make it harder than it was in WWII or today.

But that means the ships of the fleet train need to be more than just freighters or tankers taken up from trade, loaded with military supplies, and sent with/after the fleet. They need some additional handling facilities for space to space transfer without support of freight/fuel handling space stations. While it seem that many freighters serving the verge carry heavy cargo shuttles able to deliver some of their cargo to relatively rough fields on planets it's not clear that those can really handle, say, quickly moving missiles from cargo holds into the loading hatches of warships. Or moving millions of gallons of hydrogen in a reasonable timeframe.
If Haven's never had to do that on any significant scale, and hadn't carefully studied and tested their concepts for it they might not have the right kinds of ships for much of a proper fleet train.

Also, its generally easier for militaries to get funding for the big shiny weapons than it is to convince politicians to properly fund the boring (but utterly necessary) logistics. That's why the US Navy started WWII with a near crippling shortage of fast fleet tankers. They'd known for decades that they'd need them in the pacific, but couldn't convince Congress to fund more than a few. One of big reasons the battleships were patrolling the West Coast after Pearl Harbor was because the USN lacked the fleet train to keep them fueled if they'd operated from further forward! From the West Coast they could be fueled by pipelines, but even from Pearl Harbor the US didn't have the tankers to keep that base supplied for the wartime fuel consumption of warships; and certainly didn't have the tankers to let the slow BBs operate in support of any of the operations in the first year or so of the war.
So even if Haven's pre-war Octagon had identified a major deficiency in fleet train they may not have been able to get the funding through the cash strapped Harris Administration to actually build it. (The warships kept the existing conquests, who were funding the place, in line -- extra logistics doesn't do that and it might be hard to sell civilians on the need for them to succeed at future profitable conquests)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Partially true and why this discussion is fairly long. How many convoy systems are there in reality? You can't grab em in hyper9theoretically you can) So, grav waves as shown in books, but why bother they are slow and they had plenty of RHN Sultan BC's and they knew RMN shipping only had DD's/CL's still.

Based off the very scant evidence we have it looks like once war was declared convoys might have gotten bigger (and hence presumably fewer) but with more powerful escorts; so at least some convoys had CAs.

And in fact IEH explicitly says that was happening in at least part of the combat zone

Unless there is a Giant grav wave speed up zone with giant benefits to shipping in which to concentrate commerce, there is ZERO need for convoy's in reality. In Honorverse war it would be better to AVOID concentration zones and AVOID convoy's completely. If you want to attack commerce just swan around outside the hyper limit and wait. It stupid to be inside the hyper limit.

In fact, every system would be FAR BETTER off having half if not ALL of its defenders OUTSIDE the hyperliimit, not inside unless off duty.

Why? Its near improbable/impossible to find or attack in Hyper. Hyper is literally the best stealth system around and even the toughest SD's are near naked in Hyper so would be stupid to attack there so may as well never use anything tougher than a CL in Hyper at all.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Also, its generally easier for militaries to get funding for the big shiny weapons than it is to convince politicians to properly fund the boring (but utterly necessary) logistics. That's why the US Navy started WWII with a near crippling shortage of fast fleet tankers. They'd known for decades that they'd need them in the pacific, but couldn't convince Congress to fund more than a few.

If you think they had a shortage of fleet tankers before WWII then.... Today is beyond pitiful. At least then USA was building fleet oiler tankers for the world at the time and its merchant marine owned most of the oilers of the world. Today it is not building them nor owns many. If you think the USA before WWII kicked off was short of fleet oilers, the UK was far far far SHORTER on fleet logistics ships.

PS: Logistics transfer in space--> Very easy. They have pressers/pullers in the HV

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
Unless there is a Giant grav wave speed up zone with giant benefits to shipping in which to concentrate commerce, there is ZERO need for convoy's in reality. In Honorverse war it would be better to AVOID concentration zones and AVOID convoy's completely. If you want to attack commerce just swan around outside the hyper limit and wait. It stupid to be inside the hyper limit.

In fact, every system would be FAR BETTER off having half if not ALL of its defenders OUTSIDE the hyperliimit, not inside unless off duty.

Why? Its near improbable/impossible to find or attack in Hyper. Hyper is literally the best stealth system around and even the toughest SD's are near naked in Hyper so would be stupid to attack there so may as well never use anything tougher than a CL in Hyper at all.

During peacetime, yes. You're better off simply securing the hyper limit of each system against pirates and then freighters should (with minimally evasive routing) be free from any worries about interception in hyperspace. The only reason Silesia sometimes required convoys (and even there they were unusual) was that the SCN couldn't (or wouldn't) secure the local space of their systems against piracy and the government wouldn't let anybody else keep warships deployed in those systems long-term to do it for them.

During wartime however, Honor's capture showed why you need convoys. As can happen in war one of their destination systems was captured. Because of the convoy escort carefully checking each system before allowing the convoy to enter the convoy escaped with only the loss of a single escort. If those ships had instead proceeded independently then they'd each have been captured or destroyed as they showed up at Adler one at a time -- until news of the capture reached all ports and the flow of singletons to the system finally stopped.

Jonathan_S wrote:
During wartime however, Honor's capture showed why you need convoys. As can happen in war one of their destination systems was captured. Because of the convoy escort carefully checking each system before allowing the convoy to enter the convoy escaped with only the loss of a single escort. If those ships had instead proceeded independently then they'd each have been captured or destroyed as they showed up at Adler one at a time -- until news of the capture reached all ports and the flow of singletons to the system finally stopped.

Adler was a perfect example of HOW NOT TO DO COMMERCE in wartime. It is pitifully DUMB. Made a great story, but really DUMB to anyone who wishes to actually think about it instead of taking DW's words as reality.

Adler showed the OPPOSITE. The idiots kept their ships inside the hyperlimit WITHOUT sidewalls or impellers at idle. They were acting as if there was not a damned war on.

If a convoy DID show up and the enemy had a scout watching(they did) then the OBVIOUS to attack a convoy is to keep the fleet in HYPER waiting for news of said convoy from said scout, maneuver in hyper with 60X speed advantage, or MICRO JUMP right behind them...

If you are a defender, and your ships are OUTSIDE the hyperlimit and they micro jump in behind your convoy or a singlton, guess what? Their hyper generator is down and you can smash them. Instead if you are inside the hyper limit you can't do $#!^. Oh right, take nice vids of them dying and then people with 2 brain cells at Saganami Island can teach new students how NOT to defend a system/commerce.

To make it so an enemy cannot sit on prearranged entry points ALA Cerberus with a single point, you have a rotating schedule of different points/timgings. You micro jump or are relieved by the guys sitting in a gravity well without impellers on etc who come up out of said gravity well to relieve you of duty and therefore at minimum during handoff you have 2 or 3 potential spots freighters will come in on. On top of that you can have prearranged pods making it VERY painful for any attacker. An attacker, sure can see these points, if they watch long enough and are not run off, and can concentrate on them, but said defending ships can just jump into hyper after firing off a crap ton of missiles while leaving a buoy behind with a prearranged code to go elsewhere. Said attackers CANNOT avoid the missiles in the slightest with their down hyper generator.

Adler was a perfect example of HOW NOT TO DO COMMERCE in wartime. It is pitifully DUMB. Made a great story, but really DUMB