Are Tincans and CL's obsolete to "modern" fleets?

Been thinking about this for a while, and I can no longer see the point of continuing to build destroyers, and light cruisers, for modern (Manticoran-influenced) Navies.

Usually used in scouting, anti-piracy, and adding additional anti-missile defences to battlecruiser units and above.


In the role of missile defense, LAC's have taken over. Even before Oyster Bay, and Battle of Manticore, LACs were used in that role by both sides of the Havenite war. LACs provide very nearly as much MD as destroyers, in a vastly smaller (and faster) platform, and for far less crew needs.

The only downside, you need a LAC carrier to move them around (although modern navies seem to rely entirely on CLAC's and podnoughts now so this point may be moot)


In the role of anti-piracy, at least on the Manticoran side, they no longer have Marine contingents on anything below Battlecruisers, and even the BC's only get a squad compared to their old company-sized contingents. Additionally, while ship sizes were creeping up, Manticoran BC's by the time of BoMa were faster than light cruisers of before the First Havenite War.

And the last bit of scouting, was only really from picketing Havenite systems, before the outbreak of the war (Hancock Station relied on CL flotilla's to watch Seaford and such)


for a TL:DR

-Manticoran Battlecruisers are faster than most other navy, or pirate light cruisers.
-nothing smaller than a Manty Battlecruiser even has Marines anymore
-LACs provide far better missile defenses, while also being tougher to kill. And even when you lose a LAC, you lose way less crew than a tincan would.

Somtaaw wrote:In the role of anti-piracy, at least on the Manticoran side, they no longer have Marine contingents on anything below Battlecruisers, and even the BC's only get a squad compared to their old company-sized contingents. Additionally, while ship sizes were creeping up, Manticoran BC's by the time of BoMa were faster than light cruisers of before the First Havenite War.

There are still oodles of older destroyers and light cruisers with marine detachments and ERM or LERM missiles doing anti-piracy and police/customs duty in Manticoran Silesia.

The Roland-class destroyer is an interim design, and the lack of a marine complement has been noted as a problem. Whatever the next destroyer design may be, the lack of marines/prize crews is going to be addressed.

Destroyers, Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers will still be built and tasked with most of the jobs they've always been tasked with -- even though LACs may supplement or even supplant them for some tasks.

Heavy cruisers have marines.

Most would agree the roll of destroyer is nearly eradicated regarding Task force strength. Its only remaining roll is its hypergenerator and scouting in hyperbands around task forces.

All of its other roles are still viable.

CL's roles are all still there needing filling. Manticore has active anywhere from 400-800 DD/CL's in inventory still doing their assigned tasks. Remember CL's were for long range scouting and commerce protection.

Most active DD/CL in Manticore inventory are still the manpower intensive units with marines aboard.

Take a peek of House of steel and compare with Fleet strength charts of 1920 to get a firm grip of what Manticore has or does not have in inventory.

Somtaaw wrote:Been thinking about this for a while, and I can no longer see the point of continuing to build destroyers, and light cruisers, for modern (Manticoran-influenced) Navies.

Emphasis added. Do I really have to explain further

Somtaaw wrote:In the role of anti-piracy, at least on the Manticoran side, they no longer have Marine contingents on anything below Battlecruisers

Not true, the only class we have seen without a marine contingent is the Roland class

Somtaaw wrote:and even the BC's only get a squad compared to their old company-sized contingents.

Where are you getting your information? We have seen company sized marine contingents on the Saganami C, and there have been references to Nikes having "more marines" than the Sag-C.

Somtaaw wrote:Additionally, while ship sizes were creeping up, Manticoran BC's by the time of BoMa were faster than light cruisers of before the First Havenite War.

That's true now, but won't always be the case. Eventually other navies will duplicate the Grayson compensator technology, and eventually it will even find its way onto civilian and thus pirate vessels too.

Convoy escorts will always be required to be hyper capable, and battlecruisers are only required as escorts in very high threat areas. In lesser threat environments, smaller ships will be acceptable.

Somtaaw wrote:And the last bit of scouting, was only really from picketing Havenite systems, before the outbreak of the war (Hancock Station relied on CL flotilla's to watch Seaford and such)

Again, scouting hostile star systems requires hyper-capable units, and sending a battlecruiser or CLAC is a serious case of overkill. We have seen RMN use destroyers for this, so we can be confident they still have some function and will still be required for some time yet.

There has been a lot of discussion here and at Baen's Bar about transitional types and tonnage creep, and the consensus is approximately as follows:

- Ships are getting bigger on a type by type basis and will continue to do so
- Battleships (and dreadnoughts) are (an) obsolete type(s), although battlecruisers are now moving into the bottom of the old battleship tonnage bracket
- Heavy cruisers are moving into the bottom of the old battlecruiser tonnage bracket
- Either the destroyer or light cruiser type is likely to disappear (but not both), and that when this happens in the place of destroyers, light cruisers and heavy cruisers as distinct types there will only be "destroyers" (which will be a merged type of old DDs and LCs), or "cruisers" (which will be a merged type of old LCs and CAs).

I suggest you invest in a copy of House Of Steel

Somtaaw wrote:Been thinking about this for a while, and I can no longer see the point of continuing to build destroyers, and light cruisers, for modern (Manticoran-influenced) Navies.

Usually used in scouting, anti-piracy, and adding additional anti-missile defences to battlecruiser units and above.

In the role of missile defense, LAC's have taken over. Even before Oyster Bay, and Battle of Manticore, LACs were used in that role by both sides of the Havenite war. LACs provide very nearly as much MD as destroyers, in a vastly smaller (and faster) platform, and for far less crew needs.

The only downside, you need a LAC carrier to move them around (although modern navies seem to rely entirely on CLAC's and podnoughts now so this point may be moot)


In the role of anti-piracy, at least on the Manticoran side, they no longer have Marine contingents on anything below Battlecruisers, and even the BC's only get a squad compared to their old company-sized contingents. Additionally, while ship sizes were creeping up, Manticoran BC's by the time of BoMa were faster than light cruisers of before the First Havenite War.

And the last bit of scouting, was only really from picketing Havenite systems, before the outbreak of the war (Hancock Station relied on CL flotilla's to watch Seaford and such)

for a TL:DR

-Manticoran Battlecruisers are faster than most other navy, or pirate light cruisers.
-nothing smaller than a Manty Battlecruiser even has Marines anymore
-LACs provide far better missile defenses, while also being tougher to kill. And even when you lose a LAC, you lose way less crew than a tincan would.

You missed the role of the DDs as scouting/drone deployment platforms and for signalling ships all the way into Mission of Honor. Plus Rozak's light cruisers defending Torch from last gen PN ships and SLN units.

What is true is that in the last several books, the DDs and CLs have not been center stage in "fleet engagements", except the Rolands in squadron formation. That still leaves using DDs as heavily stealthed system scouting platforms. We sorta talked about that role in a recent thread, where we posited that if a Roland was scouting a system, short of the hyper limit it would be almost impossible to force it to withdraw:

http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6610

What the DDs don't have in this case is as much extended cruising time as a CL, but Oyster Bay means that there aren't going to be any more modern RMN ships for at least a couple of T-Years, so any cruiser weight ships will be built in Haven yards, and then "armed up" by the RMN at Trevor's Star and other locations plus Beowulfan missile supplies.

But let's surmise that say five years plus forward in the Honorverse, PD 1927 or so, and the SL is pretty much toast and the MAlign is either moderately successful or dead. One of the GA's concerns is to not get "boltholed" by any SL successor states. Do you build 150 or so heavy cruisers or 400 DD/CL size ships like the Roland to keep an eye out in more systems? The size and tally of the ships built then will likely come down to economics and threat environment at that time.

Somtaaw wrote:for a TL:DR

-Manticoran Battlecruisers are faster than most other navy, or pirate light cruisers.
-nothing smaller than a Manty Battlecruiser even has Marines anymore
-LACs provide far better missile defenses, while also being tougher to kill. And even when you lose a LAC, you lose way less crew than a tincan would.

Most of what I'd say has been said while I slept, but one more bit:
The next generation of "smallest cruiser" (whatever you want to call the thing) is likely to take the best of the Roland and Avalon classes and include either a small Marine contingent or be better prepared to do without it. Until then, the Avalon is doing its work with single-drive missiles; the Roland is managing marine stuff without Marines as it must; and loads of old DD's and CL's are still serving.

There will remain places that need something present without needing an entire battlecruiser - far, far too many of them for you to put an entire BC in each of them and just accept the overkill. That smallest effective unit is likely to be in the old (or even newer) heavy cruiser tonnage range, but it's going to be doing the sorts of things light cruisers and (perhaps to a lesser extent, given LAC's) destroyers had done, so it's likely to suck up one or both of those names too.

While this topic has come up a number of times before, I don't think we have exhausted it. Especially when every new book gives us new material for analysis. David Weber has also given us some infodumps which are relevant to the discussion. For some background on this topic, here are a few readings from RFC:

Is the destroyer obsolete as a ship type?
(Note that this post comes from 2004, and Weber's thoughts on this have apparently evolved by the time of the posts below, from 2011)

Future ship design

CLAC design considerations and tactical deployment
(This one doesn't address DDs or CLs, but does involve the defensive role that LACs and CLACs are taking from those light ships)

Return of the frigate as a combat-effective unit
Frigates vs. LACs... again!
(These two discussions primarily argue against frigates, but there is some discussion of the viability of destroyers in the current environment, and it could be interesting to analyse the arguments against frigates from the perspective of the current discussion about destroyers)

It appears that David himself has not quite decided the future of light ships (as of his last comments on the topic in 2011).

I'll add one more comment. We should probably limit our discussion to a period when the threat environment has stabilized somewhat. That is, I think we should focus on a time when some other star nations have the ability to produce MDMs, FTL comms, podnaughts, and perhaps even modern LACs, if they wanted to. I don't think anyone would argue that Manticore should scrap all its destroyers and cruisers right now. The question is whether those ship classes will be viable for a major military force in the future environment where they could face opponents with similar capabilities.

SWM wrote:I'll add one more comment. We should probably limit our discussion to a period when the threat environment has stabilized somewhat. That is, I think we should focus on a time when some other star nations have the ability to produce MDMs, FTL comms, podnaughts, and perhaps even modern LACs, if they wanted to. I don't think anyone would argue that Manticore should scrap all its destroyers and cruisers right now. The question is whether those ship classes will be viable for a major military force in the future environment where they could face opponents with similar capabilities.

Very good points, but I don't think the mission parameters change much, given that destroyers and CL's are quite useful for commerce protection and scouting, and those roles won't go away any time soon. Let's assume the projected MAlign fall and "SL divided into successor star nations" takes place.

There's still going to be a lot of nasty pirating activity in verge and new settled areas for the foreseeable future, because jumping a several million ton freighter (or freighters in convey) will always be a profitable enterprise everywhere... if you can get away with it. Seems likely that amongst the 2200 or so known systems, some popgun or even better organized pirate is always going to be attempting said venture(s).

Given that the RMN has more freighters than anyone else...

SharkHunter wrote: Very good points, but I don't think the mission parameters change much, given that destroyers and CL's are quite useful for commerce protection and scouting, and those roles won't go away any time soon. Let's assume the projected MAlign fall and "SL divided into successor star nations" takes place.

The mission won't change much (though with luck the stabilization of Silesia and the end of the League Secession Wars[1], the need for hyper-capable ships for anti-piracy duties should go down). The kind of ship that can do the job will, because the RMN won't have a huge tech advantage over everyone else.

[1] I expect something like this to end up being what most of humanity -- which is to say ex-Sollies -- call the current conflict.