Fortress Command

Home Fleet can’t properly defend the Junction, certainly not during the period of the pre-war build-up. The Junction is seven light-hours from Manticore-A, which means it’s functionally seven light-hours from Home Fleet if the fleet is deployed to defend the planets. FTL comm doesn’t factor into this equation because the Junction forts were built before FTL comm existed, so if the Junction is attacked (either through the wormhole or going the long way round through hyperspace), it’ll be seven hours before Home Fleet even knows it’s happening. At that point, Home Fleet has to make a choice; either they can take the shortest route out of the resonance zone and attempt a tricky micro-jump to the Junction, or make the trip in real-space. In real-space, (if my maths is correct) a least-time run will take over 17 hours and leave Home Fleet screaming past the Junction at 0.8c with its particle and radiation shields maxed out. A zero-speed intercept will take more like 24 hours. Either way, an attacking PN fleet would have plenty of time to establish control of the Junction, lay mines and bring through reinforcements and ammunition from Trevor’s Star before they had to engage Home Fleet.

And, of course, when they respond to this attack, Home Fleet are leaving the inner system with only its static defences.

The Junction and the inner system have to have their own, independent defence systems, especially in the days before FTL comms, and, as has been said, forts are a cheaper option that can’t be taken off-station, no matter how tempting the circumstances. Home Fleet, on the other hand, has to be mobile as it has to cover both Manticore and Sphinx (Gryphon is relatively expendable) and also has to serve as the RMN’s strategic reserve.

Permit me to not remember all of the details, but it seems like the "junction forts" had been there for a while, not built after OBS. Meaning that they originated before or early into King Roger's buildup which IIRC correctly started focusing on weapons development, then ships, etc.

Anyway, the big thing others have already mentioned wasn't whether or that the PN could have attacked to take the junction from the sides earlier in the war -- it was that they could have put large enough contingents of warships through multiple termini to achieve a winnable tactical superiority. Honor even works the numbers IIRC and early on, just using the majority of the battleships the PN would have torn through most of the forts, let alone Home Fleet.

yes/no?

SharkHunter wrote:Permit me to not remember all of the details, but it seems like the "junction forts" had been there for a while, not built after OBS. Meaning that they originated before or early into King Roger's buildup which IIRC correctly started focusing on weapons development, then ships, etc.

Anyway, the big thing others have already mentioned wasn't whether or that the PN could have attacked to take the junction from the sides earlier in the war -- it was that they could have put large enough contingents of warships through multiple termini to achieve a winnable tactical superiority. Honor even works the numbers IIRC and early on, just using the majority of the battleships the PN would have torn through most of the forts, let alone Home Fleet.

yes/no?

Yes, the Junction forts had been there for some time before OBS.

yes the orignal forts were in place since the start of Roger's Build up if not earlier.

there was also talk of updating the home system forts after new ones were built at Lynx and Bassilisk though i don't know what came of that

do we know if there are forts in San Martin?

I understand why none where built @ beowulf as until recently the idea that someone would attack a core world of the SL was so far beyond believable, that no-one, even the most paranoid, would have thought of a need for them.

kzt wrote:The French high command was absurdly awful. Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat is worth reading if you want to know some of how awful. But, for example, they set up at a chateaux whose phone service depended on the town postmistress. When she took an hour for lunch there was no way to reach them.

Ernest R. May's Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France is also good.

Part of the problem is that France assumed the next war would be another largely static one; they designed much of their communications plans around avoiding the possibility of eavesdropping, code breaking, or traffic analysis. Basically they planned to fight without radio; using non-interceptable wired (phone, telegraph, etc) or messengers to link units to headquarters. As soon as the fight became mobile that lack of radio would have really screwed them up even in their HQs had been up to the challenge.

But what use would the seizure of Manticore's planets be without the seizure of the forts? They can be resupplied through the Junction ad infinitum, so don't need to surrender while supported by at least Beowulf if not other systems, and can completely stop the aggressor from having any use of the Junction that is the main reason for wanting Manticore. And, given the power of their armaments, and their ability to change positions to avoid missile attacks, trying to attack them directly would be like charging tanks with horses.
Cheers
John

John Prigent wrote:But what use would the seizure of Manticore's planets be without the seizure of the forts? They can be resupplied through the Junction ad infinitum, so don't need to surrender while supported by at least Beowulf if not other systems, and can completely stop the aggressor from having any use of the Junction that is the main reason for wanting Manticore. And, given the power of their armaments, and their ability to change positions to avoid missile attacks, trying to attack them directly would be like charging tanks with horses.
Cheers
John

Not only that, but the forts aren't truly "static". They have an acceleration of 150 Gs - while they do not have hyper, they can redeploy anywhere in a system - slower than normal "mobile" units, but they can still redeploy.

Given about 2 days, they can reach the inner Manticore system. So even if someone were to "blow away" the inner defenses, the junction defenses could send a portion of their force inward to deal with the threat or to reinforce the remaining inner defenses. (Likewise, the inner forts could reinforce the junction forts while the mobile force watches the planets, though it would probably make more sense for the mobile force to cover the terminus.)

John Prigent wrote:But what use would the seizure of Manticore's planets be without the seizure of the forts? They can be resupplied through the Junction ad infinitum, so don't need to surrender while supported by at least Beowulf if not other systems, and can completely stop the aggressor from having any use of the Junction that is the main reason for wanting Manticore. And, given the power of their armaments, and their ability to change positions to avoid missile attacks, trying to attack them directly would be like charging tanks with horses.
Cheers
John

The seizure of Manticore's planets would entail the unconditional surrender of the Star Kingdom, including all elements of the RMN.

The Maginot Line was created the way it was because of politics, strategy, tactics and economy.
Go back and review the actual history.

It was a fortification built to stop or at least slow up mostly one particular opponent of the last major military conflict. I say slow up for a couple of reasons. The 1st is that, like castles and fortified cities, you might sucessfully resist a siege but you also need to retain the surrounding countryside that supports it. It doesn't really matter how big (and well equipped) your army is, you still have to have that army in place and ready to fight.
Since you really have difficulty keeping the full army at full alert all the time you have to mobilize both your (relativly small) standing army and your reserves. That takes time. See all sorts of books on WW I etc). That line and your allied military treaty partners are expected to provide that time.

The Line is the place you are going to (try to) stop the aggressor army while you compleat that mobilization. It is also the place you are going to concentrate your weapons to attempt to destoy the army that is going to attack you.

Then there are the limitations. Do you really want to piss off your allied and freindly neighbors by extending that fortified line to wall of your boarders with them just like with the people you are actualy concerned with. If X (in this case Germany) decides to attack you, going through Y to flank your wall will also put them at war with Y (who actually does have defences oriented against Germany just not the same type) AND who has different sets of alliances. Part of what you are depending on is that your friendly neighbor- who isn't interested in being over run by someone they are already worried about- will fight in their own defense, not just to protect access to you.

You need to keep up the political goodwill with the friendly neighbors.

How the hell are you supposed to know that Germany is putting together large elite groups of guys who jump out of airplanes that come from bases you can't see a hundred miles behind their boarder that will take major fortresses in your allies defense? Then there was the Blitzkreig tactic- with mechanized columns of armored vehicles (and a lot of guys with BOLT ACTION rifles and mostly horse-drawn logistics support) sailing down those nice paved roads once they had eliminated the critical roadblocks.

You also have ecomomic limitations. The whole Guns vs Butter argument. It does sometimes come down to needing to depend on someone else who is also interested in protecting themselves because you - home politics etc- can't afford to build something you know you should have but can't justify to your population because they don't see the need to treat Y like X. You also really do have a practical limit on what you can spend and most of your population isn't focused on fighting another/the next war.


It has been said that generals are always preparing to fight the last war. That is actually true. They do also try to prepare to fight what they preceive as new things that will come in the next war but they are working in theory here and the crystal ball is very cloudy about what will actually be the most effective weapons and tactics of "the next war". So you have to protect against what worked the last time (for you, them or anybody else) and GUESS what is going to confront you then beyond the hundred thousand or a million guys with rifles, slings, knives, spears and some type of cannon.

The French equipment in early WW II has been described actualy better on an item by item basis over a bunch of German stuff, the Germans had more stuff and differnt tactics. The French Army actualy did a credible job, they got, flanked (their neighbors got over run) overwhelmed, and nobody else- their existing allies- could get there early enough with enough stuff to prevent this.

Not so minor problem....Russia, who had been a MAJOR contributor to the was on the side with the French/English etc, went through their revolution in the middle of WW I and - at the start of WW II had all sorts of secret treaties with Germany which kept them out of WW II for a while. That changed the stratagy and deployments of the German armies etc in the preparation for the actual fighting start to WW II.

It is always a combination of the Politicians and the Generals that end up having to make decisions about how to spend actual capital and polictical capital/will.

Everybody was depending on (and some of them [Germany and Russia] intending soon on betraying) their treaty partners to BOTH deter and then slow down any military move by the other side. That didn't work out as well as planned.
The line actualy did quite well. The Germans had to take it from the back- which was still a problem for them until France surrendered. Heck, they used it to slow down the Allied forces going through that area on thier way to Germany late in the war. It did force the Germans to go around it.

More Politics- or was it deliberate strategy? There was the "Phony War" period where tensions were high because of what Germany was doing and while large portions of the French Army were called up and deployed- and ended up sitting around. Then, when the situation cooled down (again) France actualy did mostly stand down and it appears most of the allies went along in similar mode, unable to keep what they had started in mobilizations going forward without the direct threat of war about to break out.

Hindsight is a bitch.

kzt wrote:The French high command was absurdly awful. Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat is worth reading if you want to know some of how awful. But, for example, they set up at a chateaux whose phone service depended on the town postmistress. When she took an hour for lunch there was no way to reach them.

If you want worse try the Italians. There command and control and inter service rivalry was so bad it was criminal. On one occasion it took 7.5 hrs for a request for air cover to be processed and sent. Another took 14 hrs. The Roman phone system was so bad they had to use motorcycle dispatch riders to make sure messages actually got received.