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Raid on Sol System-Another Option

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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Jul 18, 2014 11:37 am

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JohnRoth wrote:Please remember that the MAlign also wants to break up the SL so that the remnants can coalesce around the Renaisance Factor, leaving Beowulf and the Beowulf Code out of the result.


Oh, I haven't forgotten that.

I think the strategy of the GA will mute a great deal of the chaos the MAlign is planning on using, but at least in general terms the GA and MAlign will be working towards a common goal.

JohnRoth wrote:Talking about whether the so-called "Harrington Plan" (or whatever - I don't remember it ever being given a name in any book) will succeed is beside the point. The MAlign wants it to succeed, and had its own plans in place to make it happen.


"Harrington Doctrine" is a forum short-hand for "That paragraph where Honor explains how to kill the Solarian League with kindness" -- it's just easier to type. :lol:

I'm not sure that the MAlign wants the Harrington Doctrine to succeed. If the GA manages to suppress any desire to clump together, then the plans for expanding the RF by presenting it as a "safe haven" from the chaos are going to be much more difficult to implement.

The MAlign does want the League destroyed, but their goal diverges from the GA's on the fate of the successor states.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by n7axw   » Fri Jul 18, 2014 3:48 pm

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Dafmeister wrote:
Weird Harold wrote:
Manticore alone, or the GA CAN win an outright military victory. They have the technology, ships. missiles, LACs, etc, to completely gut the Solarian League.



No, they can't. you're making the same mistake Hannibal did after Cannae. Rome put three armies into the field against him and he destroyed them all. He assumed that meant he had won the war and Rome would have to sue for peace terms. Rome didn't play ball - they avoided engaging his main army, put strong garrisons in strategic points around Italy to keep him occupied and then raised a new field army which they sent to Spain. That army, under Scipio (soon to be Scipio Africanus) conquered the Carthaginian empire there, then invaded north Africa, forcing the Carthaginian government to recall Hannibal to defend the Carthage itself and leading to the Roman victory at Zama and Carthage's defeat.

Hannibal lost the war after spending seventeen years marching around Italy more or less at will, in the course of which he never lost a battle. In spite of this, Rome declined to admit it was beaten and Hannibal wasn't able to take the city itself, which meant he couldn't stop Rome putting more and more men into the field against him.

It's the same case with the League. Hannibal Harrington can smash fleet after fleet, but unless the GA can stop the League building new fleets, establishing new shipyards, conducting new R&D, they're won't win the war. Sooner or later, a thousand SLN SD(P)s with FTL fire control on their MDMs will come across the alpha wall right on Manticore's hyper limit, and it's game over.


I think that you assuming that like Rome, the SL will be able to hold itself together. In terms of potential military resourses, you would be right. But the Leagues achilles heel is finally political, not military. If the League comes unglued before they can marshal their resourses and do the r&d that would permit them to go toe to toe with the GA, it doesn't matter how big they are. They lose. That seems the most likely possibility at the end of ART.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by Dafmeister   » Fri Jul 18, 2014 6:09 pm

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n7axw wrote:
I think that you assuming that like Rome, the SL will be able to hold itself together. In terms of potential military resourses, you would be right. But the Leagues achilles heel is finally political, not military. If the League comes unglued before they can marshal their resourses and do the r&d that would permit them to go toe to toe with the GA, it doesn't matter how big they are. They lose. That seems the most likely possibility at the end of ART.

Don


That's basically my point. If the League declines to collapse, the GA is ultimately done for - unless something happens to convince the League's leadership that Manticore is right about Mesa after all. This will likely require a wholesale change of leadership in the League, though, so I doubt it.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Jul 18, 2014 6:41 pm

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Dafmeister wrote:That's basically my point. If the League declines to collapse, ...


I don't think the League has that option. With Beowulf's secession and the Mandarin/SLN's military response, the breakup is already in progress. Only some incredibly ill-advised attacks could reunite the League and postpone the breakup until the GA is defeated, but nothing can reverse the process.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by n7axw   » Fri Jul 18, 2014 8:34 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
Dafmeister wrote:That's basically my point. If the League declines to collapse, ...


I don't think the League has that option. With Beowulf's secession and the Mandarin/SLN's military response, the breakup is already in progress. Only some incredibly ill-advised attacks could reunite the League and postpone the breakup until the GA is defeated, but nothing can reverse the process.


At the end of ART, the Mandarins are contemplating using force to prevent secession. If they really try that, it will probably come unglued pretty fast. GA could be perceived as liberators!

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by doug941   » Wed Jul 23, 2014 7:24 pm

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I wouldn't really recommend this plan but if two questions could be answered NO and YES then an attack on one or more Core World systems could be successful. The questions are 1) Do perimeter footprint sensors detect N-space drives? 2) If they do, do they ignore drives approaching from in-system? Attack groups would drop into N-space several light days beyond sensor range above or below the elliptic, go to stealth to penetrate the system. Wave one then approaches perimeter platforms destroys as much of them as possible, leaves system. Wave two would be timed to hit Hyperion and mothballed ships at the same time as wave one then leaves. The important part of this Japanese style attack is the scanner platforms. If all platforms are destroyed or even heavily damaged, the government and citizens will DEMAND pickets to replace the platforms. The number of ships required to picket one system would most likely be equal to a sector fleet.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by kzt   » Wed Jul 23, 2014 7:52 pm

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The sensors that can detect crossing the alpha wall have a range of light months.

It's been argued here that these sensors are extraordinarily difficult to destroy, as they are essentially a huge cloud of satellites separated by significant amount of space, such a nuke or a missile wedge will only destroy a small percentage of the sensor field.

David has never discussed this in any detail as far as I know, though the fact that the MAN didn't target the Manticore sensors does suggest that the sensors are not nearly as easy to kill as I originally though.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by Weird Harold   » Wed Jul 23, 2014 8:30 pm

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doug941 wrote:1) Do perimeter footprint sensors detect N-space drives?


Yes they do -- or at least sensors of some kind refine data and give estimations of wedge strength and ship characteristics to various sensor watch officers we've seen.

Of course such sensor networks only look for Impeller Drive signatures. Spider Drive or reaction thrusters aren't looked for because they are either unknown/undetectable or only the insane would use them.

The biggest argument against the GA using your plan is that it is totally unnecessary; any GA task force could take out every military target in the Sol system with any need to be sneaky or stealthy.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by doug941   » Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:49 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
doug941 wrote:1) Do perimeter footprint sensors detect N-space drives?


Yes they do -- or at least sensors of some kind refine data and give estimations of wedge strength and ship characteristics to various sensor watch officers we've seen.

Of course such sensor networks only look for Impeller Drive signatures. Spider Drive or reaction thrusters aren't looked for because they are either unknown/undetectable or only the insane would use them.

The biggest argument against the GA using your plan is that it is totally unnecessary; any GA task force could take out every military target in the Sol system with any need to be sneaky or stealthy.


The second wave, if this operation was to be attempted, would go after the hulls. IF your navy could degrade the sensor platforms the outcome would be to nail down hundreds of picket vessels. A sphere at Jupiter's orbit would be approx 7,615,996,415,910,000,000 square kilometers(7.6 Quintillion) Think how big a circle a Sollie vessel could actually cover vs the size of the sphere. A secondary effect is if pickets are used, a Mistletoe could target them. A VERY big if that it could actually be pulled off, but think outside the box.
KZT I seem to remember that first class system arrays measure in the range of kilometers ie small number of arrays but large in size.
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Re: Raid on Sol System-Another Option
Post by kzt   » Wed Jul 23, 2014 11:07 pm

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doug941 wrote: KZT I seem to remember that first class system arrays measure in the range of kilometers ie small number of arrays but large in size.

They were stated to thousands of KM in size, but that it pretty vague.
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