All out Warfare Against the Sollies

As the title suggests.. This is a thought exercise about what the GA would do if the were prepared to wage all-out war against the Sollies. Think about Winston and Pritchett (and Anderman) on an all out warpath wanting nothing but blood and destruction among the core worlds of the SL. How would this transpire - what would happen?

M<y take:
1- The GA would have 7-8 raiding fleets who were each given 3-6 'core SL worlds' to take out. Each fleet would be comprised of, roughly speaking: 50 SD(P)s [Apollo capable], 1 squad CLAC, 2 squad BC, 2 squad Heavy Cruiser, 3 squad Destroyers/Light Cruisers, 4-6 Ammo ships packed full of Apollo pods (and some ancillary missiles for the light combatants in smaller numbers).
2- Commanders would be: Harrington (1st GA Fleet), Henke (2nd GA fleet), Tourville (3rd GA fleet), Yu (4th GA fleet), Rabenstrange (5th GA fleet), Truman (6th GA fleet), and Who Else?
3- Each fleet would have 3-6 targets to hit among the 'core SL' worlds. They would fly in, pound any naval unit and installation to dust via Apollo at long range, and then move in close to energy range to wreck every space-facility present. Upon completion of that, they would leave the system for the next.

My second question: If the GA did this - pursued total war against the SL - how long would it be until the SL sued for peace OR acquired the capability to fight back? Assuming it will take 2-3 years for the SL to acquire basic MDM/FTL/Pod tech and start producing units, and then another 2-3 years from there to acquire Apollo tech and start producing units, we're looking at almost 10 T-years until the SL could field units capable of matching current generation GA tech. And, the GA won't be standing still - they'll be improving. So, is it theoretically possible for the GA to hammer the SL into submission and get their core [the strongest, richest, etc] worlds to join the GA and completely forget about the GA before the size of the GA crushes the GA?

What happens first is that every core world converts much of their industrial capability into building cataphracts in system defense pods. Since in the honorverse you can just magically produce stuff given plans and it always works, after a month they are producing them at half the rate Manticore did, so about 5000 pods a day. So assume they have been doing that for 6 months when a GA fleet shows up, and they have intelligently deployed them and the needed fire control.

So how does it work out when that force runs into 750,000 hardened and camouflaged system defense pods carefully dispersed such that you can only get one per 100mt warhead?

kzt wrote:What happens first is that every core world converts much of their industrial capability into building cataphracts in system defense pods. Since in the honorverse you can just magically produce stuff given plans and it always works, after a month they are producing them at half the rate Manticore did, so about 5000 pods a day. So assume they have been doing that for 6 months when a GA fleet shows up, and they have intelligently deployed them and the needed fire control.

So how does it work out when that force runs into 750,000 hardened and camouflaged system defense pods carefully dispersed such that you can only get one per 100mt warhead?

How effective (or useful) would those be if the GA fleets sat down 50m Km outside of range and send massed Ghost Rider drones looking for pods/fire control stations as well as launched Apollo pods at the system defense pods as they are found?

Range > Numbers if the people with range are intelligent and patient.

The sheer size of the league makes it difficult to fight long term. The GA could destroy all SLN and all the space based industries in the Sl. But they could not prevent it from being rebuilt or SL doing one or more Boltholes. If SLN plays it smart they could keep the GA fighting small actions for years while they develop the tech to match them.

There are 1700+ core member worlds and unknown number of smaller systems. SL space is about 200 light years in diameter.

I don't think going all out against the SL is needed. The current 'plan' of stripping away the verge and shell planets and making them GA friends would cause less bloodshed at the same time bring about the dissolution of the league.

Erls wrote:How effective (or useful) would those be if the GA fleets sat down 50m Km outside of range and send massed Ghost Rider drones looking for pods/fire control stations as well as launched Apollo pods at the system defense pods as they are found?

They are DDMs. They have no maximum range. They have an effective range, but since they have a couple million of them and are making 50,000 more every day, I suspect this would be exciting in a way you don't expect.

And not being dumb, they have lots of shuttle/pinnace sized lightly armed non-hyper vessels patrolling - and servicing the pods and other defensive systems - around the space within a few million km of their planet (which oddly enough is where their defenses are) looking for stealthy intruders. Like ones with running fusion reactors running at a few million C. They have 12 billion people, so they can afford to assign a few hundred thousand to this critical task. And non-hyper capable small craft are cheap and easy to build for a core world.

Which is good as the complex and expensive part is working on the next generation of equipment.

Erls wrote:As the title suggests.. This is a thought exercise about what the GA would do if the were prepared to wage all-out war against the Sollies. Think about Winston and Pritchett (and Anderman) on an all out warpath wanting nothing but blood and destruction among the core worlds of the SL. How would this transpire - what would happen?

...

It doesn't really matter if it is just Manticore or the entire Haven Sector plus Beowulf, Adm Whitehaven's analysis is still valid"

Storm From the Shadows
Chapter Forty-four wrote:"A few months ago, Hamish," the Prime Minister of Manticore said, "you gave us your evaluation of what would happen if we found ourselves in a shooting war with the Solarian League. Has that evaluation changed?"

"In the longer term, no." White Haven's prompt response—and grim expression—made it evident he'd been thinking about exactly the same question. "I'll want to look at the technical appendices of Khumalo's dispatches—just as I'm sure Tom and Pat will want to do—in case they tell us anything interesting, but everything BuWeaps has turned up from its examination of the Monica prizes has only strengthened my conviction that the SLN is several generations behind us in terms of applied military hardware. Obviously, there's no way of knowing exactly where they are in terms of research and development, and God only knows what they might have in the procurement pipeline, but even for the League, putting such fundamentally new weapons technologies into mass production and fitting them into an existing fleet structure is going to take time. Lots of time. God knows it took us long enough, and we had a life-or-death incentive to make the move. The League doesn't, and its political and military bureaucracies suffer from a lot more inherent inertia than ours ever did. In fact, I'll be very surprised if the bureaucratic bottlenecks and simple ingrained resistance to change and 'not invented here' prejudices don't double or triple the time requirement the purely physical constraints would impose.

"Assuming we do have the sort of technological edge BuWeaps is currently projecting, we'll rip the ass off of any Solarian force we run into, if you'll pardon my language, at least in the immediate future. Eventually, though, assuming they have the stomach for the kinds of casualty totals we can inflict on them, they'll suck up whatever we can do to them, develop the same weapons, and run right over us. Either that, or we'll hit some sort of 'negotiated peace,' and they'll go home and pull a Theisman on us. We'll wake up one fine morning and discover that the Solarian League Navy has a wall of battle just like ours only lots, lots bigger . . . at which point, we're toast."

Add in the probable "waking a sleeping giant" risk and the fate of the GA is sealed. It might take ten or twenty years, but the League would crush the entire sector --whether they were involved with the GA or not.

Erls wrote:My second question: If the GA did this - pursued total war against the SL - how long would it be until the SL sued for peace OR acquired the capability to fight back? Assuming it will take 2-3 years for the SL to acquire basic MDM/FTL/Pod tech and start producing units, and then another 2-3 years from there to acquire Apollo tech and start producing units, we're looking at almost 10 T-years until the SL could field units capable of matching current generation GA tech. And, the GA won't be standing still - they'll be improving.

RFC's estimate (quoted in someone's signature) is six years before the SLN could field podnaughts. Ten wouldn't be unreasonable for them to reach full parity in tech.

The League has a much deeper pool of technical expertise than Manticore or Haven or both so the GA isn't going to be running as far ahead as you might think.

Erls wrote:So, is it theoretically possible for the GA to hammer the SL into submission and get their core [the strongest, richest, etc] worlds to join the GA and completely forget about the GA before the size of the GA crushes the GA?

NO. If the GA comes on like a bully and dishes out the kind of lop-sided thrashing they're capable of, almost nobody is going to seceded from the League. (I think you mistyped a few GAs in there.) Even the MAlign's efforts to fragment the League (and build the Renaissance Factor into a pan-human government) will not be enough to get many systems to secede.

Re-read Storm From the Shadows Chapter Forty Four. The analysis there is about Manticore standing alone, but it applies almost completely to the GA as well. It will never be enough to conquer the Solarian League, the League MUST be destroyed without inspiring revanchist elements to build a "bolthole" of their own.

It depends on how one defines "all out warfare".

If you're willing to accept total war - and all the civilian casualties that implies, the GA could, in theory, eliminate the League as a functioning entity by destroying planetary populations wholesale. Unfortunately, once you start that path, you have to completely finish it - and that would involve killing off a rather massive percentage of the entire human race, and putting picket forces in the formerly inhabited systems for some time to get anyone who was in transit between systems. Also, once you start that path, you have to be ever-watchful for somebody trying something similar against you, whether for revenge or because they just don't like you.
For some reason, I rather doubt that the GA is going to take that option.


The 'best' option that Manticore and the GA has is to break the League into a series of much smaller successor states without inspiring a lasting hatred of Manticore and the GA that could lead to widespread revanchist tendencies.
And, frankly, things have gone far enough that Manticore and the GA has to break up the League, no matter what the League and the Mandarins do, as a survival imperative - leaving the League intact now means that in a couple decades at most, the League can do the same sort of thing to Manticore and the GA that Theisman and Haven did to Manticore with Bolthole and Operation Thunderbolt, only on a larger and more devastating scale.

Kytheros wrote:It depends on how one defines "all out warfare".

If you're willing to accept total war - and all the civilian casualties that implies, the GA could, in theory, eliminate the League as a functioning entity by destroying planetary populations wholesale. Unfortunately, once you start that path, you have to completely finish it - and that would involve killing off a rather massive percentage of the entire human race, and putting picket forces in the formerly inhabited systems for some time to get anyone who was in transit between systems. Also, once you start that path, you have to be ever-watchful for somebody trying something similar against you, whether for revenge or because they just don't like you.
For some reason, I rather doubt that the GA is going to take that option.


The 'best' option that Manticore and the GA has is to break the League into a series of much smaller successor states without inspiring a lasting hatred of Manticore and the GA that could lead to widespread revanchist tendencies.
And, frankly, things have gone far enough that Manticore and the GA has to break up the League, no matter what the League and the Mandarins do, as a survival imperative - leaving the League intact now means that in a couple decades at most, the League can do the same sort of thing to Manticore and the GA that Theisman and Haven did to Manticore with Bolthole and Operation Thunderbolt, only on a larger and more devastating scale.

No, that's not the best option. The best option is to do nothing while the MAlign breaks up the League.

pnakasone wrote:The sheer size of the league makes it difficult to fight long term. The GA could destroy all SLN and all the space based industries in the Sl. But they could not prevent it from being rebuilt or SL doing one or more Boltholes. If SLN plays it smart they could keep the GA fighting small actions for years while they develop the tech to match them.

There are 1700+ core member worlds and unknown number of smaller systems. SL space is about 200 light years in diameter.

That analysis made sense when it was the SKM versus the League. Now that Haven is added to the mix I am beginning to wonder if that isn't as true anymore.

We had a few straws in the wind in the textev: the comments by Captain Gweon on how the combined economic power of Haven and Manticore would surpass the League in "ten to fifteen T-years" are the best ones. And the rumors that a few worlds (daughter colonies?) are considering seceding in addition to Beowulf.

I'd say breaking up the Solarian League is still the best strategy, but the actual implementation of that strategy has to change dramatically now that Haven and Beowulf (and possibly other Solarian worlds) are added to the GA.