Relax wrote:1:200 is in the USA military as a super power being a world policeman. It used to be much higher during the cold war. In China 1: 600 is in the military without being a world policeman. This is under active service. Total active service today is over 2% of the worlds population. By and large under long standing peace conditions. Without a major war(s) in recent memory. When one adds in all of the paramilitary oragizations and reserves, total population is around 5-6% out of 7 Billion.
Manticore: Old Kingdom: ~7+ Billion Silesia is another 40 planets with over 2 Billion each for a tidy 80 Billion. TQ is another 20ish planets with another Billion plus-Billion.
Total For Manticore alone is roughly 100 Billion.
Haven has 150 Planets with even larger populations for a total of around 3-500 Billion people.
War is very recent: Intersteller police work is increasing under this scenario. Both yours and mine.
Number of spacers per ship just reduced by a factor of around 4:1 leaving plenty for logistics work.
So, lets not even argue the stated 15% active verses 85% support at the moment. Lets just take it at face value that these numbers are true in 2000 years. Oh, bother, why not calculate the numbers as given in the books:
If Manticore without a draft is more than able to place 30 million in uniform when the old star kingdom with a population of 3 Billion in the 1st havenite war, or 1/100, 1% then with a new population of 100 Billion, putting a Billion in uniform should also not be a problem. Now lets factor in the stated 15% active 85% support and then factor in the 4:1 reduction in crew size.
1st Havenite War: 30,000,000 in Military service. Includes army(garrisoning lots of ex havenite planets, around 10,000,000 if I recall correctly.) Sorry this is from memory of SVW through HAE, so not completely accurate: here goes. Feel more than free to correct my numbers. How many were in the Transporation side? I do not know. I completely forget, so, fighting ship totals will be high.
1 SDP:6000
1 BC: 2500
1 CA: 1100
1 DD: 400
4 SHIPS/10,000 active and ratio of support would be roughly 60,000 if ~85%. Total 4 Ships, Round up(edited) ~70,000 to keep things easy.
20,000,000/70,000 = 285 ships.
From HoS, Manticore has only built a total of ~3000 ships in its entire existence. At height of 1st Havenite war, total number of ships possible is around 1900 ships. Minus destroyed is around 1800-1700. Call it 1500 to be safe.
1500:285(300) = 5X as many as projected by 85%(1 in 7) number. So, ACTUAL, support personnel per ACTIVE member, lets calculate.
20,000,000/1500 = 13,333 per ship average ship is ~2500 2500/13,333 or 1 in 6 is active. If one states that the number of small ships is much greater than large ships(it is and was) this drops back into the 1 in 7 (85%) support personnel range.
So, 85% support is ~~~ used in the Honorverse. IF we want to quibble 5% either direction have at it. Going forward, will use the 85% number.
4:1 ratio in active ship service compared to 1st Havenite war
SDP: 6000: 1500
BC: 2500: 750 and as low as 350 GSN BCP
CA: 1100: 370
DD: 400: 80
~ 4 ships 10,000:2700 close enough to the 4:1 reduction to be a meahhh number. Then add in far more DD's/CL's and LAC's than larger ships and the 4:1 number looks quite conservative. So, 2700 active equals 16,000 support or a total of roughly 20,000 to be conservative.
Lets look at our dear darlings: Manticore 100 Billion population. Average EARTH population in military uniform is ~2% or applied to Manticores case this results in 2 Billion in service(Oh wait, did I already state this a Billion in service should not be a problem... Oh wait I did.) 1st Havenite war only had 1% in service in a MAJOR drag out death war, half of what Earth has under ~PEACE! So, Honorverse military expenditures in a drag out death knell war do not even align with earth PEACE conditions!
But I digress, Lets drop Manticores 1% in military service in a drag down fight to less than 1%. Lets just chop it in half for S&G's. 0.5%. Still leaves 500 MILLION dudes and dudettes in military service under the new Manticoran Empire... Or exactly what USA is currently at under ~peace conditions post Cold War by 20 years, or roughly what this whole thread is roughly about.
500,000,000 (0.15) = 75,000,000 active personnel.
Number of ships with 75M = 75M/20,000 = 3750 ships.
3750:
800 SDP
200 CLAC
750 BC
500 CA
1500 DD/CL
Since I rounded upwards dramatically I am assuming this excessive rounding error covers local LAC defense...
If we used historical earth numbers(today) for active duty in PEACE time conditions, the number of ships would quadrupple.
i)
I am not arguing that the SEM in particular or the Republic of Haven can or cannot have 1% of their population in the military, in fact the United States had roughly 8.73%(12,209,000) of their total population(139,900,000) in uniform in 1945 while Canada had 8.3% (1,074,000) of their total population(12,072,000) in uniform in 1945. So a mere 1% of the total population is in fact not too great a number to mobilize IF there is a need. Currently the world’s military numbers are at roughly 65,000,000 million men, women and children but and this is a huge but that does not really give an accurate representation of the numbers because in the paramilitary number they account for cadet organizations(children not soldiers), SWAT teams, border security, internal police, some federal police units such as the People’s Armed Police in China ~1.1-1.5 million, India’s Central Reserve Police Force(~278,000), US Homeland Security and other irregular units. Also this includes militia’s whose only strength is numbers as they are poorly trained if at all with little to no equipment in some cases not even firearms being available.
Now that we have come to the conclusion of part one let me summarize:
We now know that in times of total war nations can field a significant portion of their total population.
We know that in times of relative peace or at least no total war nations field significantly smaller military forces, kind of like the US military being roughly 6/10 of a percent of the total American population even though the US could be argued is in a war while having recently gotten out of 2 separate wars...
We can see that total numbers are meaningless unless we know what they represent and how it adds up to our point (Adding cadets and police officers to the military total as well as untrained ad poorly equipped militia).
ii)
Lets go to the second overall point. The RMN is highly trained and well educated military organization which is one of the best in the galaxy all else being equal, meaning if we assume that all else(resources, numbers, funds, technology etc...) were equal the RMN would be one of if not the best simply because of the quality of their training. Seeing as the general education level of the population in Talbott and Silesia are both significantly lower than in the old SKM, and a large % of the population is not prolong recipient we can safely assume that the RMN has to invest significant amounts of money, resources and manpower in order to start bringing in members from both Talbott and Silesia. This means that for the decade or two after Talbott and Silesia become SEM members the members from both sectors wishing to join the RMN would require significantly longer periods of training(50%-100% or more) to reach the basic level of competence that the RMN expects of its people. So a large section of the RMN which is strapped for trained manpower as it is would need to be tied down in Talbott and Silesia manning training camps in order to open up the flow of manpower from both those sectors, if they rush the training they risk bringing the overall quality of the RMN down.So for the life of me I cannot see how the SKM and RMN can take longer to train each individual member, and do so with a small cadre of instructors while get numbers approaching 10,000,000 by 1931 PD from both Silesia and Talbot let alone 100,000,000 or even 1,000,000,000.
Back to the summary:
The RMN is one of if not the best in the Galaxy because of the quality of training and education of its members.
The quality of education and training in both Silesia and Talbott are both significantly lower than that of the old SKM which means that the SKM has to invest alot of resources to fix the education system which will help once the next generation comes through.
Because of lower education level the RMN will need to invest significantly longer into each and every recruit to get them to the level that the RMN expects them to be. During that long period of time the RMN will have to detach a large number of its members to those training duties while still maintaining its training stations in the old SKM to keep up with the flow of recruits.
iii)
For a nation to maintain a military force, it need to have the economic muscle to build weapons and equipment, maintain said equipment and replace both the equipment and weapons. It need the economic muscle to be able to train, equip, field, and pay for its members and when the need arises for the treatment and recovery of those members. The Military is by its very nature unproductive(it makes no money for the nation while costing a lot), its entire purpose is national security which means that nations generally attempt to keep their military as small as they can while still meeting their national security needs. I don’t remember the exact breakdown of the economics, but I remember that the old SKM represented a large portion of the national wealth, and it will not change quickly enough to change the fact that you expect that the RMN will increase to half a billion to a billion members over a decade while the balance of economic power will not change that quickly. So you are in fact expecting the 3 billion citizens from the old SKM plus some of the more affluent members from both Silesia and Talbott to pay for a military of 1 billion members or more which is unrealistic unless the situation was desperate enough to warrant it. As previously mentioned, a military force is very costly, a huge military force is extremely costly. The SKM might have had 1% or more of its population in uniform but that was as far as it went without disrupting its economy and that was only possible because of the danger posed by the PRH, if the threat was not there the people will not tolerate the cost of such an oversized force.
Summary:
Military forces are costly, there is a level that the population will accept as long as its the lowest number able to accomplish the national security needs.
A large military will be tolerated and funded only if the population feels the need for it, if there was no PRH threat, the RMN would not have maintained such a large force and the same goes for the Army and the Marines.
A large force raised from Talbott and Silesia, while disregarding the above mentioned prolonged training and deficit in education, will have to be maintained in large part by the old SKM population as it is the most rich of the SEM.
If the SEM invests in a huge military to keep the peace everywhere in the galaxy, it cannot invest in its Talbott and Silesian territory which means their general economic growth will stagnate.
iv)
Your theory is unrealistic because of the following reasons:
A large military costs money, if the situation warrants it people will make sacrifices for the greater good as well as their own good but if the situation does not directly affect them they become less likely to be willing to make sacrifices for the good of someone far, far away from you.
The citizens of Manticore will not be willing to foot the bill for the defense and counter piracy for the entire league space. They wont be willing to take financial sacrifices and send their own citizens to die for the good of someone 1,000 LY away.
The GA or Manticore will need a lot of ships for anti-piracy and alot more for those times when they piss off a local power and have to put it in its place... kind of like the league used to do right?
Tell me how you will convince the citizens of Greyson, Manticore, Haven and Beowulf that they have to make sacrifices(both financial and the loss of loved once) for the good of everyone but them.
