SLN reserve possibilities

biochem wrote:

That's not what he said, and you know it. He said that it was unlikely that there was detailed tactical information on the news, not that there was any sort of ridiculous censorship like that.

Also, most of the civilian ships were probably heading away from the battle as fast as their drives could manage under redline conditions. Of course there are always a few Darwin Award candidates who would be heading toward the battle to get a closer look. Those who survived might have had some interesting footage to sell to the media after the fact, but without military sensors what they would have been able to obtain would have been severely limited.

That is basicly what I was trying to say. I find it improbable that anyone civilian would have gotten in the shooting gallery between the two fleets or even off to the side to get estimates on range, missile performance, etc. My own belief would be that they would be trying to chivy civilian ships as far away from the action as possible. That is presuming that there were civilian ships in the area where Tourville came over the hyperwall to start with.

Don

I'm sure there were no civilian ships at Sphinx. It's just the second largest planet Manticore has and has one of the two massive industrial nodes in the system. Why would there be any ships there?

There wouldn't be say... SDF observers there who just may, uh hem, just MAY have figured out where operation "RAGING JUSTICE" was headed before hand and decided they would get some hard data maybe?

Relax wrote:There wouldn't be say... SDF observers there who just may, uh hem, just MAY have figured out where operation "RAGING JUSTICE" was headed before hand and decided they would get some hard data maybe?

No, they would NEVER do anything like this. That would be underhanded and sly, and the SL stands for truth, justice and the Solarian way of life. Well, and OFS too, with the occasional "demonstration" as needed on those people who disagree with their betters.

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:There wouldn't be say... SDF observers there who just may, uh hem, just MAY have figured out where operation "RAGING JUSTICE" was headed before hand and decided they would get some hard data maybe?

No, they would NEVER do anything like this. That would be underhanded and sly, and the SL stands for truth, justice and the Solarian way of life. Well, and OFS too, with the occasional "demonstration" as needed on those people who disagree with their betters.

Why would they bother. They already know that the ISLN is going to wipe the Manties off the face of the universe, so there is no reason to send anyone to watch what happens. We'll just read Filareta's after action report .

fallsfromtrees wrote:Why would they bother. They already know that the ISLN is going to wipe the Manties off the face of the universe, so there is no reason to send anyone to watch what happens. We'll just read Filareta's after action report .

Well, no, I would strongly argue that the Mannerheim SDF does not believe this. I doubt they are alone. I would also expect some media vessels equipped, purely by chance naturally, with excellent sensors of all sorts.

kzt wrote:Did you turn on your TV on the morning of Sept 11, 2001? What was every station showing? There were a few billion people in the Manticore system who were very, very interested in what was going on. My guess is that the media was perfectly willing to cater to them, as they had the same interest.

I suspect the media wasn't showing a live feed from the tactical displays of Honor, Tourville and/or Fillareta? And I'm pretty sure none of those characters where doing pieces to the accompanying media cameras explaining the what & the why after each decision or action? (If they where, said scenes where curiously edited from the books?)

At best they'd have civilian-grade sensors from well outside the battle-zone, any intercepts they could get of transmissions (which basically is going to be warnings from the RMN to civilian traffic and, maybe, the Honor-Fillareta conversation) and any press releases from the Admiralty and/or SL embassy. Which is not going to include live footage of SD(P)s deploying pods, is not going to be showing the locations of the system-defence pods before said pods have launched. I doubt they'd have been briefed on Honor's plan beforehand either.

SharkHunter wrote:Secondarily, they've been told that while they might have enough star systems in the League (including shipyards) to do the work, they won't have the money to build the type of ships they need to fight the RMN unless they attempt to impose direct taxation, something that presumably WOULD get the Solarian Assembly off it's collective arse and finally opposing where things are going. We don't know what will happen in the political uni-farce that is the SL, that's David's to decide.

A minor nitpick. The person who told them they'll need direct taxation is a Mesan agent. Now I doubt he flat out lied on this point, it would probably be too easy to get caught on it but I could well believe he didn't give a full, frank and honest discussion of the realities.

Somewhat like Tony Blair's infamous dossier justifying invading Iraq. "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction that can be deployed within 15 minutes at British territory!" it said, however when it said 'British territory' it didn't actually mean any part of the British Isles but rather the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. (i.e. Cyprus)

Relax wrote:There wouldn't be say... SDF observers there who just may, uh hem, just MAY have figured out where operation "RAGING JUSTICE" was headed before hand and decided they would get some hard data maybe?

Given how early Filareta's orders were leaked, I wouldn't be surprised if about every third "newsy" dispatch boat was crewed by a foreign intelligence agency of some description.

I would be surprised, however, if Manticoran intelligence wasn't aware of most of them and had noted the most interesting visitor-observers. They did know exactly which boat was going to tip Tsang off, after all.

kzt wrote:Well, no, I would strongly argue that the Mannerheim SDF does not believe this. I doubt they are alone. I would also expect some media vessels equipped, purely by chance naturally, with excellent sensors of all sorts.

For a more apt somewhat current reference, In my mind anyway.

How about the first Iraq War? Everyone knew what was going to happen, even where genrally. They didn't know when.

How much tactically or scientifically useful data was there on say, stealth tech, from all those media reports and videos?

Or how about that Israeli attack on the nuclear reactor in the 80's. I definitely remember all kinds of talking heads mentioning dive bombing as the only way to get that kind of accuracy. Of course there wasn't much onsite media coverage on that event though.

But sure you know that the SLN (bloody Queen made a system wide announcement) is coming your a freighter captain or owner and you are going to conduct normal operations. I think not. "Hey didn't you need a month's vacation with the family in Landing." For example.

So any ship that was there, if the navy didn't just declare the area an exclusion area and boot everybody before hand, is going to be looked at rather closely by the system intelligence services.

Sure am glad you aren't running the company I own shares in. Wait, I don't own any shares of anything. <grin>

Have fun,
T2M