The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.

pldew wrote:I'll accept the premise that there is no need to reconsider strategic priorities if:

a. Someone will explain how the League can project power sufficient to harm the SEM within five years of the end of CoG. Not just do R&D, but create a fighting force and doctrine to use it, with officers to lead it.

They can't, but that isn't quite the same thing as completely realising this. Nor does it mean they can't attempt anything - they have god knows how many thousands of ships in FF to try something with. If they went with a dispersive strategy, the GA can't possibly intercept all of them.

b. Someone will explain how "the biggest intelligence coup of the last several centuries" lacks the relevance to change anyone's strategic thinking. Particularly in light of the formation of the Grand Alliance in direct response.

What hard evidence did Cachat & Zilwicki bring back, really? One science geek, a few recordings and a lot of hearsay which fits the circumstantial evidence available. Simoes isn't going to be handed over to the SLN's ONI for interrogation, even if they were prepared to believe he wasn't a clever deception to get the League off Manticore's back.

Accepting the existence of the MAlign and all the deeds ascribed to it by the GA means a massive review of how the League operates. It means a massive witch hunt looking for MAlign agents(who do not know they are MAlign agents), necessitating digging up every last illegal action and bribe and investigating whether they were normal business or MAlign motivated. All that corruption has to be rooted out, which ultimately means destroying what the League is.

There are FAR too many people who know the basics about how a MDM works for the data to not leak fast. Essentially any ordinance tech in the IAN, RHN, or RMN can make himself a few million by delivering a tech manual to any of a number of people in the SL. Just describing at a high level how the drive segments are kept from interfering with each other is worth a lot.

If you can deliver the entire technical data package (which is presumably a lot more limited distribution) I suspect the reward is a lot more. Or an actual full up missile or missile pod. And it just isn't - given that you have millions of missiles and hundreds of thousands of pods, with thousands every day being produced, shipped, deployed, serviced, refurbished, and repaired - that hard to make one go astray.

Once you have that I suspect it's less then a year until you have mass production of system defense MDMs. They may be big, they may have poor sensors and mediocre war heads, but if you can get an industrialized core planet cranking them out as fast as they can that is a huge amount of firepower.

And suddenly offensive operations of the GA come to a screeching halt, because you now need an entire fleet - that is many squadrons SD(P) supported by squadrons of CLACs, to be able to effective attack any of the many core worlds that are busy building a fleet of warships. And the GA really doesn't have enough fleets.

So yeah, they need to be very careful and do something fast. Though I suspect the MA has plans running to blow the SLN into many little pieces.

munroburton wrote:
What hard evidence did Cachat & Zilwicki bring back, really? One science geek, a few recordings and a lot of hearsay which fits the circumstantial evidence available. Simoes isn't going to be handed over to the SLN's ONI for interrogation, even if they were prepared to believe he wasn't a clever deception to get the League off Manticore's back.

Whatever they brought back was sufficient to end a twenty year war between the RH and the SEM overnight. It was also sufficient to convince Beowulf to openly support Manticore in ways it had not done for centuries before, and to the detriment of it's own interests as a Core world of the League.

These are two massive geopolitical (astropolitical?) shifts. Why would you not reconsider priorities when the facts on the ground change that much?

pldew wrote:I'll accept the premise that there is no need to reconsider strategic priorities if:

a. Someone will explain how the League can project power sufficient to harm the SEM within five years of the end of CoG. Not just do R&D, but create a fighting force and doctrine to use it, with competent officers to lead it.

and

b. Someone will explain how "the biggest intelligence coup of the last several centuries" lacks the relevance to change anyone's strategic thinking. Particularly in light of the formation of the Grand Alliance in direct response.

I'd actually say that the Mesan Alliance is the biggest intelligence target.

Manticore doesn't know (but probably suspects), and the readers are pretty sure, that any real GA fleet could crush Darius and all the combined SDFs of the RF planets. But only if the GA knows where to send that force. (And can sell why they're attacking "good guys" without triggering a worst backlash)

The Solarian League's individual planets are the biggest diplomatic target. Convincing the individual planets that they don't want to support the Mandarins misguided and costly vendetta against Manticore. And that if they'd stand aside Manticore and the rest of the GA would be happy to resume trade with them (including wormhole network access)

The biggest military targets, at least for now, are
1) any FF/BF force that attempts to attack GA systems, or other systems the GA has offered military protection to.
2) raids against the military infrastructure of systems which support offensive FF/BF actions
3) maintaining or extending control of the extended wormhole network

Military action can't be taken against the Alignment until intel had identified a target. And much military action against the SLN or individual planet's SDFs would undermine their diplomatic and economic attempts to split planets away from central League control.


While the revelations about the Alignment, and their guilt for setting this whole mess up, definitely change the intel focus and effort, as yet there's nothing there for the diplomatic or military forces of the GA to work on. So it doesn't look to me, like it's any conflict for those forces to continue focusing on tasks that directly or indirectly facilitate (as peacefully as possible) dismantling the League.

pldew wrote:
Whatever they brought back was sufficient to end a twenty year war between the RH and the SEM overnight. It was also sufficient to convince Beowulf to openly support Manticore in ways it had not done for centuries before, and to the detriment of it's own interests as a Core world of the League.

These are two massive geopolitical (astropolitical?) shifts. Why would you not reconsider priorities when the facts on the ground change that much?

Because the ground hasn't really changed that much, at least with regards to the Solarian League. The Grand Alliance is in an identical strategic position as Manticore was vis-a-vis the League: it can thrash it badly in any given engagement in the short term, but will get smashed very, very badly by the League in the long term unless it can dismantle the League altogether.

The League is big and scary.
But The SKM was able to pressure the League to outlaw military exports to the Haven Sector long before the war started.
The SKM has been steadily increasing Terminus fees for years, and the League has not taken any action.
The League was big and scary then, to. But the SKM took those actions when MDMs were still a gleam in Adcock's eyes.

I see wariness of the League, more than fear, in the way the SKM has dealt with it. We haven't heard a GA assessment yet.

I'm also not sure the GA needs to exert itself to dismantle the League. It seems to be heading that way in any case. But I think we won't really know how big a threat the League is until we see how the Core worlds react. If they stand together, that is one thing. If there is significant internal turmoil, there will be no sudden development of newly advanced weaponry that can fight the GA. If large numbers of Core worlds secede, the League is already done. It may behoove the GA to stand back in such a case, and attempt to be an honest broker to the successor states. Maybe.
I consider the Verge and Protectorate worlds as essentially irrelevant to the cohesiveness of the SL, and the Fringe only slightly more important. The Core is what matters.

Jonathan_S wrote:

pldew wrote:I'll accept the premise that there is no need to reconsider strategic priorities if:

a. Someone will explain how the League can project power sufficient to harm the SEM within five years of the end of CoG. Not just do R&D, but create a fighting force and doctrine to use it, with competent officers to lead it.

and

b. Someone will explain how "the biggest intelligence coup of the last several centuries" lacks the relevance to change anyone's strategic thinking. Particularly in light of the formation of the Grand Alliance in direct response.

I'd actually say that the Mesan Alliance is the biggest intelligence target.

Manticore doesn't know (but probably suspects), and the readers are pretty sure, that any real GA fleet could crush Darius and all the combined SDFs of the RF planets. But only if the GA knows where to send that force. (And can sell why they're attacking "good guys" without triggering a worst backlash)

The Solarian League's individual planets are the biggest diplomatic target. Convincing the individual planets that they don't want to support the Mandarins misguided and costly vendetta against Manticore. And that if they'd stand aside Manticore and the rest of the GA would be happy to resume trade with them (including wormhole network access)

The biggest military targets, at least for now, are
1) any FF/BF force that attempts to attack GA systems, or other systems the GA has offered military protection to.
2) raids against the military infrastructure of systems which support offensive FF/BF actions
3) maintaining or extending control of the extended wormhole network

Military action can't be taken against the Alignment until intel had identified a target. And much military action against the SLN or individual planet's SDFs would undermine their diplomatic and economic attempts to split planets away from central League control.


While the revelations about the Alignment, and their guilt for setting this whole mess up, definitely change the intel focus and effort, as yet there's nothing there for the diplomatic or military forces of the GA to work on. So it doesn't look to me, like it's any conflict for those forces to continue focusing on tasks that directly or indirectly facilitate (as peacefully as possible) dismantling the League.

That. Clear and concise.
Maybe needs juuuuust a little more info regarding pldew's a) point.
We are assuming that:
1. we are looking at this from the GA's Point of view, as they are the ones that need to make changes in their doctrine
2. the GA stops/severely cuts its efforts to dismantle the League and goes after the MAlign.
3. the League makes a decision to go after the GA - well, actually the decision is made at the time we are discussing - post 2 BoM.


The current measures (Laocoon) taken by the GA have hurt the League badly, but not mortaly, not yet. They may have halved the overal ability of the League to undertake such a project, but no more than that. More to the point, if changing strategic priorities means throwing a rather biger part of the GA fleet in the effort to find and deal with the MAlign, that means Laocoon II is to stop or be severely cut - the light units involved will be needed for scouting the thousands of possible systems and such.

(The main /or one of the main/ driving force that was to work for dismantling the league according to the MAlign plan wad Manticore - that has done some work, but will cease. So the League will be rather less likely to further dismantle on its own. Well, the GA does not know that, but let's put it here - it helps to evaluate the chances of the league imploding on its own.)

The League has at least 50 (more possibly at least 100 of even more) individual members with overal economics bigger and more powerfull than that of Haven pre-operation Thunderbolt.
Haven needed something like 15-30 years overal, to go from the first idea of creating Bolthole to the possibility of operation Thunderbolt. That while fighting first an interstellar war with a serious foe, and then a civil war.
Now imagine what 5 or 10 of these League members can do united, if given 4-5 years and access to all the knowledge base of the League /can be easily done even if these 5 or 10 are the only ones participating in the effort/.
NOW multiply that times 10. THAT is only what the most powerfull League members can do. There are at least a thousand of them overal and you can safely assume that at least a quarter of them will join given enough incentive /joint ownership of the Manticore junction for example/ or fear factor /look what they did to our commerce, they are bankrupting us and so on and so forth/.

Competent officers the League has enough, at least for the core of the future fleet. Some of them we've seen in Battle fleet - very few indeed and rather junior, but still there, and there are more of them - statistics . There are more in Frontier fleet - not all of them clean and white and puffy, but still competent and certainly experienced.
There will be some in the several big enough System Defence fleets - probably not very experienced, but relatively competent regarding Ships of the Wall handling, which Frontier Fleet officers lack.
One other point - the truly incompetent Solly officers we've seen were generally high level ones and their stafs. Most of the ship captains and their stafs might have been overly arrogant and certainly not familiar with the Manty and Haven Tech, but there is text evidence that they and their crews fought with competence/as far as their knowledge permitted them/, discipline and courage. And remember, the High Officers we saw being dismantled were specificaly chosen by MAlign for the task. Yes, the MAlign hoped they will do more damage to Manticore, but not because of their competence - that was a case of severely underestimating the tech advantage of the Manticorans.

Now, the doctrine will be the hardest part. To develop that, the League needs specific intelligence on the exact capabilities of the GA's tech, competent military personnel to develop said doctrine and some idea on what the League's tech will look like. /The intelligence needed to start working on analogues of that tech is rather less specific and more easily obtainable./
Competent officers I think can be found - not very many of them as a percent of the total personnel of the League fleets, but then the total is rather big.
The intelligence might really prove too hard to acquire, but too hard does not necessarily mean impossible - at least not enough to convince the GA that the threat is insignificant. Especially given several years and an unlimited cash flow.
The sheer scope of the League's science base gives enough hope that a relatively clear idea of what the future tech will look like might be presented soon enough to start working on the initial doctrine, and given that the R&D is left undisturbed, updates will be readily available.

To sum up - what 5 years of undistracted R&D, shipbuilding and fleet building might give the League is /at a bare minimum/ - with a high enough degree of probability from the POV of the GA- a League military R&D and shipbuilding industry that is hidden enough, dispersed enough and/or defended enough the GA will:
a)not be able to discover and destroy all of it in time for the results of its actions to lead to a sufficient closing of the gap between GA and League tech,
b) literally not be able to afford the losses it will take to destroy it, or
c) /least probable, but then again Murphy works both ways/ not be able to destroy the resulting League fleet and the tech/shipyard infrastructure with the forces it will possess at the time.

Remember we are talking military planning, which must plan for the worst possible scenario that is statisticaly likely enough to occur, given the information available to the planners. The core League worlds alone possess the industrial and scientific potential to easily create within these 5 years a military complex 10 times more potent than the one possible for the entire GA. They are already at war with the GA - declared or not. Whether they can find the political will to make the decision or be able to cooperate easily enough is a guessing game that no one in the position of the GA can afford to play. The potential threat clearly exist, there are enough resouces to remove it at the moment - therefore it must be removed before it becomes worse.

Hey my training ships would solve this problem. Just need enough of them. In Talbot there are all those SD(P) right around the corner. Shouldn't be a problem to detach 15 DD that then go for help. Could use dispatch boats too. Or old DD.

kiddmeier wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd actually say that the Mesan Alliance is the biggest intelligence target.

Manticore doesn't know (but probably suspects), and the readers are pretty sure, that any real GA fleet could crush Darius and all the combined SDFs of the RF planets. But only if the GA knows where to send that force. (And can sell why they're attacking "good guys" without triggering a worst backlash)

The Solarian League's individual planets are the biggest diplomatic target. Convincing the individual planets that they don't want to support the Mandarins misguided and costly vendetta against Manticore. And that if they'd stand aside Manticore and the rest of the GA would be happy to resume trade with them (including wormhole network access)

The biggest military targets, at least for now, are
1) any FF/BF force that attempts to attack GA systems, or other systems the GA has offered military protection to.
2) raids against the military infrastructure of systems which support offensive FF/BF actions
3) maintaining or extending control of the extended wormhole network

Military action can't be taken against the Alignment until intel had identified a target. And much military action against the SLN or individual planet's SDFs would undermine their diplomatic and economic attempts to split planets away from central League control.


While the revelations about the Alignment, and their guilt for setting this whole mess up, definitely change the intel focus and effort, as yet there's nothing there for the diplomatic or military forces of the GA to work on. So it doesn't look to me, like it's any conflict for those forces to continue focusing on tasks that directly or indirectly facilitate (as peacefully as possible) dismantling the League.

That. Clear and concise.
Maybe needs juuuuust a little more info regarding pldew's a) point.
We are assuming that:
1. we are looking at this from the GA's Point of view, as they are the ones that need to make changes in their doctrine
2. the GA stops/severely cuts its efforts to dismantle the League and goes after the MAlign.
3. the League makes a decision to go after the GA - well, actually the decision is made at the time we are discussing - post 2 BoM.


The current measures (Laocoon) taken by the GA have hurt the League badly, but not mortaly, not yet. They may have halved the overal ability of the League to undertake such a project, but no more than that. More to the point, if changing strategic priorities means throwing a rather biger part of the GA fleet in the effort to find and deal with the MAlign, that means Laocoon II is to stop or be severely cut - the light units involved will be needed for scouting the thousands of possible systems and such.

(The main /or one of the main/ driving force that was to work for dismantling the league according to the MAlign plan wad Manticore - that has done some work, but will cease. So the League will be rather less likely to further dismantle on its own. Well, the GA does not know that, but let's put it here - it helps to evaluate the chances of the league imploding on its own.)

The League has at least 50 (more possibly at least 100 of even more) individual members with overal economics bigger and more powerfull than that of Haven pre-operation Thunderbolt.
Haven needed something like 15-30 years overal, to go from the first idea of creating Bolthole to the possibility of operation Thunderbolt. That while fighting first an interstellar war with a serious foe, and then a civil war.
Now imagine what 5 or 10 of these League members can do united, if given 4-5 years and access to all the knowledge base of the League /can be easily done even if these 5 or 10 are the only ones participating in the effort/.
NOW multiply that times 10. THAT is only what the most powerfull League members can do. There are at least a thousand of them overal and you can safely assume that at least a quarter of them will join given enough incentive /joint ownership of the Manticore junction for example/ or fear factor /look what they did to our commerce, they are bankrupting us and so on and so forth/.

Competent officers the League has enough, at least for the core of the future fleet. Some of them we've seen in Battle fleet - very few indeed and rather junior, but still there, and there are more of them - statistics . There are more in Frontier fleet - not all of them clean and white and puffy, but still competent and certainly experienced.
There will be some in the several big enough System Defence fleets - probably not very experienced, but relatively competent regarding Ships of the Wall handling, which Frontier Fleet officers lack.
One other point - the truly incompetent Solly officers we've seen were generally high level ones and their stafs. Most of the ship captains and their stafs might have been overly arrogant and certainly not familiar with the Manty and Haven Tech, but there is text evidence that they and their crews fought with competence/as far as their knowledge permitted them/, discipline and courage. And remember, the High Officers we saw being dismantled were specificaly chosen by MAlign for the task. Yes, the MAlign hoped they will do more damage to Manticore, but not because of their competence - that was a case of severely underestimating the tech advantage of the Manticorans.

Now, the doctrine will be the hardest part. To develop that, the League needs specific intelligence on the exact capabilities of the GA's tech, competent military personnel to develop said doctrine and some idea on what the League's tech will look like. /The intelligence needed to start working on analogues of that tech is rather less specific and more easily obtainable./
Competent officers I think can be found - not very many of them as a percent of the total personnel of the League fleets, but then the total is rather big.
The intelligence might really prove too hard to acquire, but too hard does not necessarily mean impossible - at least not enough to convince the GA that the threat is insignificant. Especially given several years and an unlimited cash flow.
The sheer scope of the League's science base gives enough hope that a relatively clear idea of what the future tech will look like might be presented soon enough to start working on the initial doctrine, and given that the R&D is left undisturbed, updates will be readily available.

To sum up - what 5 years of undistracted R&D, shipbuilding and fleet building might give the League is /at a bare minimum/ - with a high enough degree of probability from the POV of the GA- a League military R&D and shipbuilding industry that is hidden enough, dispersed enough and/or defended enough the GA will:
a)not be able to discover and destroy all of it in time for the results of its actions to lead to a sufficient closing of the gap between GA and League tech,
b) literally not be able to afford the losses it will take to destroy it, or
c) /least probable, but then again Murphy works both ways/ not be able to destroy the resulting League fleet and the tech/shipyard infrastructure with the forces it will possess at the time.

Remember we are talking military planning, which must plan for the worst possible scenario that is statisticaly likely enough to occur, given the information available to the planners. The core League worlds alone possess the industrial and scientific potential to easily create within these 5 years a military complex 10 times more potent than the one possible for the entire GA. They are already at war with the GA - declared or not. Whether they can find the political will to make the decision or be able to cooperate easily enough is a guessing game that no one in the position of the GA can afford to play. The potential threat clearly exist, there are enough resouces to remove it at the moment - therefore it must be removed before it becomes worse.

I'll call that an answer and thank you. We'll see what happens...

Look at what Kingsford is now being suggested and what was done using co-opted SLN leaders in the past.
The Alignment had been slinking around creating problems for Manticore (specifically, not through the whole manipulating Haven scenario) with things like Monica and supporting the opponent groups in the Talbott Sector.
They maneuver Byng into his position and while that creates a lot of problems for Manticore, it doesn’t have the desired effect of having the SLN in the form of FF start chewing away at Manticore in Talbott. It does set up the scenario of SL being in an almost war condition with Manticore and hardens the position of the Mandarins- because that is the only way they can see to react to it without compromising their own incomes and power base. A chunk is taken from SLN’s experienced fighting forces in the form of the FF officers and enlisted who are at least dealing with actual situations regularly.
Then Crandall shows up. Another long built plan with an Alignment controlled officer and it goes badly wrong from the Alignment’s perspective. Crandall looses or has captured the entire force. This takes away a fair chunk of SLN’s active duty forces and logistics and is a major political was well as military loss for SL. Same reaction from the Mandarins. It’s not their fault…no, it really isn’t, it is the CNO’s fault and he is dodging the issue. The effect for the Alignment does have merit. It removes what should be competent (most of them anyway) SLN people and a lot of the better ships which damages SLN and the SL’s ability to secure the League. It creates more problems for Manticore.
Then Fillerta shows up. What a Cluster xxxx with the leak through Bewoulf. 300 first line SDs and screen/support lost. Act of War that not even the Mandarins can talk their way past AND Haven has buried the hatchet and come in on the side of Manticore against the SL. More significant damage to the League in terms of ships, people and the fabric of the League that keeps the League functioning as means to control local and regional along with individual problems from starting “minor” wars in the military or open economic sense involving member systems.

Although it is not even hinted at in the books, it is “possible” that the leak about Fillerta could have been an Alignment gambit. Detweiler certainly knows a lot about the actual performance of RMN and look to stage a gladiatorial contest where Manticore has to fight and, whatever the outcome, both sides are going to be very badly hurt. It is possible that the intent of the leak was to pull RMN units home to face Fillerta, take pressure off Haven and decimate the SLN force along with much of RMN with the possible capture and elimination of Manticore as a power. That Harrington would go to Haven with 8th Fleet on an actual honest and balanced peace mission to end the war is not something the Alignment was ever going to expect.

In the three SL military moves, they were actually following long standing SLN policy and tactics in dealing with the problems. Show up with overwhelming force and be prepared to take losses (instead of relying on bluff or just the physical threat) to crush your opposition. In all three cases they got squashed, totally outclassed and surrendered the bulk of the ships/people.

What is it going to take to get Kingsford to realize that they can’t follow traditional tactics and survive let alone win?
Commerce raiding is going to annoy Manticore and provoke some level of retaliation but is going to take a long time to implement and longer to find out what it is accomplishing.
What we know as Lacoon I and especially II (we have no idea what the SLN is calling them) has hurt the SL. Hurt it badly. Is there a way for the SLN to do something similar to Manticore? More specifically, is there something it can do which is not going to cost it another fleet or two with accomplishing little more than showing how badly it is outclassed and ineffective?

Crandal was going after the political and military node of Manticore in Talbott. Fillerta was going after the home system. Stop going for the spectacular kill. It is time for the SLN to follow that honored tradition of “hitting them where they aren’t”. Send strike forces at targets that are important to Manticore but are not presently heavily defended.
We as readers know that the last thing Manticore wants to do is hit League Member Systems, primarily because that would draw the worst political reaction possible and force the League to pull closer together for “defense”.
The Mandarins and Kingsford probably have an idea that Manticore can’t actually go after Core League Members and expect to win even in the short term. Rather than attempt to deal with Manticore (and now Haven and- for the SL how many others) with commerce raiding and the Death-by-a-Thousand-Cuts method to distract the SL population with minor victories, why not go all the way and poke the monster again with hitting Manticore allied systems with crushing raids and get Manticore to make the mistake of hitting a SL Core System in retaliation.
That certainly would work for the Alignment. Political chaos, mad scramble for ad hoc alliances between SL neighbors to get out of the way of the Neo-Barbs and the insane SL Bureaucracy with it’s ineffectual SLN. A balkanized former SL erupting into the equivalent of tribal wars.
Albrecht would wet himself with glee.
Might be 20 volumes of story there, just look at the Ring of Fire stuff