Why did breakaway attempt to swap ships why was it needed?

I was just rereading OAR and i had a thought if these ships that were in stealth for the whole journey were not detected why not have those ships drop out of hyper while still stealthed? for that matter why not have a huge amount of ships hide in stealth and only use the minimum they needed to break through the gbaba line so that the gbaba still knew they killed all the ships they picked up fleeing but have say 100 or even 1000 ships that they did not pick up fleeing and use that as the breakaway fleet? In other words why not only use like 20 war ships and like 5 transports be unstealthed and have 100 transports and 50 warships be stealthed and then the 100 transports and 50 warships drop out of hyper while still in stealth while the gbaba find the 20 warships and 5 transports kill them and then think that they got all of the humans?

As far as I know that was never officially explained, but I always assumed that the transports (with their need for cargo space) could not devote enough capacity to stealth to get undetected through the main line of the Gbaba.

Dropping out of hyper would only have worked for the smaller scouts, and only if something distracted them and prevented them from really searching for missing units.

The full stealth ships that got undetected through to provide the later cover would most probably have only limited combat capacity remaining - which would fit with them pretending to be the colony transports as well.

RFC explained it "Operation Breakaway" fairly well. The 46 military ships that accompanied the colony fleet as part of "Operation Breakaway" were in full stealth and had their engine emissions modified to match the civilian ships they were to impersonate. As planned, the Gbaba scouts that had been in range to detect the fleet all the way from Sol were destroyed, but they'd already sent the info of the number of TF ships and their drive emissions to the Gbaban fleet that appeared shortly afterwards. Note that the 46 ships of Operation Ark and their doppelganger military counterparts weren't the only ships involved - an entire TF fleet was sent along to break through the shell of Gbaba ships that englobed the Sol system.

"Breakaway had been Pei's personal brainchild, the sleight-of-hand intended to convince the Gbaba they'd successfully tracked down and totally destroyed mankind's last desperate colonization attempt. That was why the forty-six dreadnoughts and carriers which had accompanied the rest of his task force in stealth had not fired a missile or launched a fighter during the fight to break through the shell of capital ships covering the Gbaba scout globe around the Sol System.

It had been a stiff engagement, although its outcome had never been in doubt. But by hiding under stealth, aided by the background emissions of heavy weapons fire and the dueling electronic warfare systems of the opposing forces, they had hopefully remained undetected and unsuspected by the Gbaba.

The sacrifice of two full destroyer squadrons who'd dropped behind to pick off the only scout ships close enough to actually hold the escaping colony fleet on sensors had allowed Pei to break free and run, and deep inside, he'd hoped they'd manage to stay away from the Gbaba scouts. That despite all odds, all of his fleet might yet survive. But whatever he'd hoped, he'd never really expected it, and that was why those ships had stayed in stealth until this moment."

Those Gbaban scouts didn't realize that each "colony" ship on their scanners was actually two TF ships with very similar drive emissions, one of which was heavily stealthed. Once the scouts were destroyed and the Gbaba were out of scanner range, the colony fleet dropped out of hyper and the military fleet dropped its stealth, which made the fleet appear nearly identical to scanners, while leaving the colony fleet far behind.

"Forty-six huge starships killed their hyper drives and disappeared as they dropped instantly sublight. But in the very same instant that they did, forty-six other starships, which had been carefully hidden away in stealth, appeared just as quickly. It was a precisely coordinated maneuver which Pei's command had practiced over and over again in the simulators, and more than a dozen times in actual space, and they performed it this one last time flawlessly. The forty-six newcomers slid quickly and smoothly into the holes which had abruptly appeared in the formation, and their drives' emissions signatures were almost perfect matches for those of the ships which had disappeared."

It's a good guess that the TF Navy had enough experience at that point to estimate how far away the capital ships of the Gbaban fleet that englobed the Sol system were located. Remember, it took years for the Gbaba to fight their way through the system defenses of each of the TF planets, and Sol was by far the toughest nut for them to crack. (I'd love to hear just how costly wiping out Earth was for the Gbaba someday.)

At this point both the military and the colony fleets had broken through the Gbaban fleet that englobed the Sol system. The Gbaba most likely guessed that they were facing a colony fleet and gave chase, but only the military ships were where they expected them to be. Once enough time went by for the colony fleet to be well out of the Gababa's scanner range, since it could be reasonably sure the Gbaban fleet would follow and pounce on the military fleet, the 46 ships of Operation Ark jumped back into hyper and made their escape in a completely different direction.

Since the Gbaba saw exactly what they expected when they caught up with the military fleet and they had no scout ships left in scanner range to tell them anything different, they had no clue that the colony fleet existed so they never looked for it.

"When the Gbaba navy arrived—and it would; for all of their age, Gbaba ships were still faster than human vessels—it would find exactly the same number of ships its scouts had reported fleeing Sol. Exactly the same number of ships its scouts had reported when they finally made contact with the fugitives once again.

And when every one of those ships was destroyed, when every one of the humans crewing them had been killed, the Gbaba would assume they'd destroyed all of those fugitives."

The Gbaba expected to see 46 ships whose drive signatures matched those in the transmissions they'd received from their scouts. That's what they saw when they caught the military fleet, so they figured they'd caught them all, since that fleet had been tracked all the way from Sol, except for the brief time when Breakaway was executed.

It's entirely possible that there were more than 46 ships left in the military fleet at that point, but that made no difference in the Gbaba's ignorance of the escaping colony fleet, and merely made the final battle more costly for both sides - and probably more convincing to the Gbaba that it had been an attempt to break a colony fleet out of the Sol system. Ironically they were right, but they failed to realize they'd let the actual colony fleet slip through their manipulative digits.

McGuinness,

You give an excellent explanation of how Operation Breakaway worked. But the original poster was asking why they needed to swap ships at all--why they couldn't have simply stealthed the real transports while fake transports accompanied the fleet. There would be no need to swap visible ships then. Your summary does not explain that.

I think the simplest explanation is probably that the transports couldn't be stealthed the way the warships were.

SWM wrote:McGuinness,

You give an excellent explanation of how Operation Breakaway worked. But the original poster was asking why they needed to swap ships at all--why they couldn't have simply stealthed the real transports while fake transports accompanied the fleet. There would be no need to swap visible ships then. Your summary does not explain that.

I think the simplest explanation is probably that the transports couldn't be stealthed the way the warships were.

Oh that's easy. Stealth or no stealth, the Federation couldn't hide the fact that they had ships breaking through the Gbaba blockade. But they COULD hide the exact number of ships getting through the blockade, so they put together a fleet where every two ships posed as one ship so that when the Gbaba destroyed half the fleet, they were fooled into thinking they got the whole fleet.

evilauthor wrote:

SWM wrote:McGuinness,

You give an excellent explanation of how Operation Breakaway worked. But the original poster was asking why they needed to swap ships at all--why they couldn't have simply stealthed the real transports while fake transports accompanied the fleet. There would be no need to swap visible ships then. Your summary does not explain that.

I think the simplest explanation is probably that the transports couldn't be stealthed the way the warships were.

Oh that's easy. Stealth or no stealth, the Federation couldn't hide the fact that they had ships breaking through the Gbaba blockade. But they COULD hide the exact number of ships getting through the blockade, so they put together a fleet where every two ships posed as one ship so that when the Gbaba destroyed half the fleet, they were fooled into thinking they got the whole fleet.

But that still doesn't answer the original poster's question. Yes, we know there had to be visible ships and stealthed ships for Operation Breakaway. The original poster was asking why the real transports weren't stealthed and fake transports visible right from the beginning, instead of swapping half-way through.

SWM wrote:But that still doesn't answer the original poster's question. Yes, we know there had to be visible ships and stealthed ships for Operation Breakaway. The original poster was asking why the real transports weren't stealthed and fake transports visible right from the beginning, instead of swapping half-way through.

Didn't someone else already answer this? The transports were inherently less capable of stealth on the move, so had to hide someplace where they wouldn't be immediately under observation after leaving Earth.

That means if they tried to break out of Earth with the warships in the open and the colony ships stealthed, there's a greater chance that the Gbaba will spot the stealthed colony ships along side the warships, which in turn screws up the whole "make the Gbaba think two ships is really one ship".

And remember, the Federation can't read Gbaba minds. If the Gbaba count more ships than they're supposed to, the colony fleet won't know it until the Gbaba turn up on their doorstep looking for them.

evilauthor wrote:Didn't someone else already answer this? The transports were inherently less capable of stealth on the move, so had to hide someplace where they wouldn't be immediately under observation after leaving Earth.

Yes, it has been answered twice with valid responses. But MacGuinness's post did not address the question asked, and neither did your first post. The question has been answered, though there may be some alternative answers no one has mentioned yet. I'm just trying to make sure people understand what the actual question was.