Late 1921 PD SLN Raid Planning - Zunker

I tried to do some thought exercises in the past, and they have usually failed or went awry, but something compels me to try again...

It's late 1921 and you, an SLN battle "planner", have been tasked to come up with a way to take the fight to the RMN via the Zunker-Idaho hyper-bridge, and open a backdoor into the RMN's backyard.

Starting with the known Zunker defensive strength - 3 large CAs, 4 CL sized DDs, and 2 squadrons of locally owned LACs - as relayed from Frontier Fleet Commodore Pyun, and the assume the same # of System defensive missiles per CA as shown at Spindle (minimum of 3 launches of ~1000 missiles per CA), Create an assault plan of the Zunker terminus and then the Idaho terminus via the wormhole.

Assume that the resonance zone is 3 million KM across at the terminus and ~85Mtons is the maximum limit of the wormhole, which will tie up the wormhole for just over 4 hours.

Per instructions from your SLN superiors, assume only a similar CA sized force protecting the Idaho side of the terminus, which may not be in position to intercept any wormhole traffic if your plan is swift enough.

What force and tactics would you use (as the SLN planner stuck with the job) to assault the Zunker Terminus and carry through to the Idaho Terminus.

Theemile wrote:I tried to do some thought exercises in the past, and they have usually failed or went awry, but something compels me to try again...

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What force and tactics would you use (as the SLN planner stuck with the job) to assault the Zunker Terminus and carry through to the Idaho Terminus.

I think this is where it goes awry - there's a gulf between what the planner would like and what they actually have available. A force of similar composition to Tsang or Crandall's task force, preferably supplied with Cataphracts and pods, would be able to drive the Zunker picket off or destroy it and then carry through to take the other terminus. With casualties, of course.

With what's actually available? Well, Pyun already tried.

I'd say the minimum force capable of retaking both termini requires several scores of vessels, simply to spread the enemy's salvos thin. Wallers, whilst capable of absorbing more damage, might not be ideal for the wormhole assault as only 11 or 12 of them can go through at a time, whereas nearly 90 Nevadas could pop through. Or over 800 destroyers.

Even without knowing about the GA's LACs yet, heavy losses are expected.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:I tried to do some thought exercises in the past, and they have usually failed or went awry, but something compels me to try again...

<Snip>

What force and tactics would you use (as the SLN planner stuck with the job) to assault the Zunker Terminus and carry through to the Idaho Terminus.

I think this is where it goes awry - there's a gulf between what the planner would like and what they actually have available. A force of similar composition to Tsang or Crandall's task force, preferably supplied with Cataphracts and pods, would be able to drive the Zunker picket off or destroy it and then carry through to take the other terminus. With casualties, of course.

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And that's usually the case. I'm just wondering if we can sneak into the mind of one of those planners that makes the "emergency action" scenarios for major militaries - you know - the folders that get handed to the President or Prime Minister whenever something has come up around the world as the initial response options. (Of course, they've been quickly dusted off and revised to show the current response time for the closest carrier and erase the "1299th" squadron from the force tally because it is no longer at the "WallaWalla" airbase.)

Sidenote - I always love when the news hears about someone at the Pentagon wargaming an attack on some country or small American town and makes a big fuss about it. Let's face it, America pays people to come up with these senarios all the time so that when something happens, you blow off the dust, update the details, and hand it to the President, so there can be a planned response if necessary.

Theemile wrote:Assume that the resonance zone is 3 million KM across at the terminus and ~85Mtons is the maximum limit of the wormhole, which will tie up the wormhole for just over 4 hours.

Based on the numbers given for the Junction I figure 85 mtons to be more like a 3.09 hour lock-down. (I'm assuming the destablization for a given tonnage is universal across wormholes; that they vary only with what the maximum supported tonnage is)

Anyway, it should be a fairly minor point, because any plan predicated on requiring a second use of the wormhole, for reinforcements or retreat, after multiple hours of destablization is pretty badly flawed to begin with.


But trying to come through even a lightly defended wormhole is suicide. Even just 3 CA's with pods could wipe out dozens of SDs attempting to force the wormhole. They're stuck for a minute or two in the grav turbulent 'lane' with no ability to use sidewalls, wedge, CMs, or towed decoys is just a slaughter waiting to happen - just sails and PDLCs to hope to beat off the missile storm (And without sidewalls to worry about the missiles can stand-off further making the PDLC's job that much harder).

The only realistic approach is to jump each terminus from hyper and attempt to kill or drive off the defenders.
You'll still likely take serious lumps from the pods, but at least you can mitigate much of their range advantage and be able to have your full defenses up...

Jonathan_S wrote:
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Anyway, it should be a fairly minor point, because any plan predicated on requiring a second use of the wormhole, for reinforcements or retreat, after multiple hours of destablization is pretty badly flawed to begin with.


But trying to come through even a lightly defended wormhole is suicide. Even just 3 CA's with pods could wipe out dozens of SDs attempting to force the wormhole. They're stuck for a minute or two in the grav turbulent 'lane' with no ability to use sidewalls, wedge, CMs, or towed decoys is just a slaughter waiting to happen - just sails and PDLCs to hope to beat off the missile storm (And without sidewalls to worry about the missiles can stand-off further making the PDLC's job that much harder).

The only realistic approach is to jump each terminus from hyper and attempt to kill or drive off the defenders.
You'll still likely take serious lumps from the pods, but at least you can mitigate much of their range advantage and be able to have your full defenses up...

Oh, I agree - but the SLN hasn't seemed to realize it - See Adm. Tang's taskforce. They actually thought that they had a chance of sneaking through the Manticore Wormhole - which we know that even if 80% of the Terminus's defenses were destroyed, they wouldn't have had a chance.

Personally, I believe the SLN would try massed transit assaults, under the mistaken assumption that the first wave should weaken the defenses, so the 2nd wave may have a larger chance of success, or the 3rd, or the 4th, or....

This is another case of doctrine not keeping up with technology, and the SLN is both behind on technology and doctrine on the technology they do have.

Theemile wrote:Oh, I agree - but the SLN hasn't seemed to realize it - See Adm. Tang's taskforce. They actually thought that they had a chance of sneaking through the Manticore Wormhole - which we know that even if 80% of the Terminus's defenses were destroyed, they wouldn't have had a chance.

Personally, I believe the SLN would try massed transit assaults, under the mistaken assumption that the first wave should weaken the defenses, so the 2nd wave may have a larger chance of success, or the 3rd, or the 4th, or....

This is another case of doctrine not keeping up with technology, and the SLN is both behind on technology and doctrine on the technology they do have.

Am I the only one who finds SLN stupidity like this so outlandish to be implausible? That it breaks my suspension-of-disbelief?

(I haven't read the rest of the posts in this thread in order to avoid picking up any ideas from anyone else, so if I repeat someone else's suggestions it was coincidence. I also do not have my copy of ART here, so I can't go back and re-read the account of the skirmish at Zunker. Also, I'm assuming Theemile meant 'late 1922', not 1921, as Zunker and the battle of Spindle didn't happen until 1922)

As far as I see it, if I do have full access to O'Cleary's after action report, an officer with an actual brain (which I am assuming I have) can fairly easily see that the Manties' main advantages lie in the extended range of their missiles, the extremely high closing speeds those ranges permit, their strong penetration and defensive EW, and their investments in fire control to throw very large salvos. I can't do very much about the last two of those (though at least they won't come as complete surprises this time), but I can do a lot to minimize the advantages of the first two.

The crux of my battle plan (at least for the assault on the Zunker end of the terminus) is that I know where the terminus is, and we're assuming the resonance zone is only 3 million KM wide. That means that I can drop out of hyper very close to it, which completely changes the balance of the battle. Let's say we bring along a decent wall of battle with screen (let's say 48 SDs - 6 squadrons - plus a roughly equivalent number of lighter units). I'd drop out of hyper 1 million KM outside of the resonance zone (i.e. allowance for shitty solarian astrogation), heading towards it with the maximum velocity (~14,000 km/s) I can bring along in a crash translation and accelerating at max. My goal is simply to charge straight forward and start shooting as quickly as I can from the shortest range possible, in an attempt to 'get under the guns' of the manties and negate the advantages of their extended range capabilities. I am also assuming that I have access to the same Cataphract-Bs for my SDs' internal tubes and pods of Cataphract-Cs as Filareta's force had for the attack on Manticore.

On the defensive side, at spindle Crandall's force of 71 SDs and 77 escorts stopped ~1000 shipkillers out of a salvo of ~9000 attack birds (plus presumably a proportionate amount of the ~3000 EW birds) traveling at a closing velocity of 0.73c. If I am assuming that the 3 'large CA' (Sag-Cs) can fire proportionally as large of salvos, I'm looking at ~3000 missile salvos, and perhaps I'll guess at another thousand from the 'CLs' (Rolands). Just with raw numbers, that'd suggest I need a force four times as large as Crandall's to have adequate missile defense, but that's ignoring the differences in the tactical situation here.

Namely, the short range limits the closing velocity that the manty missiles can generate. Even in sprint mode, a MK-23 that travels (say) 4 million KM only has a final velocity of 0.29c, which is about the same as the final velocity of a standard single-drive missile in endurance mode (AKA a velocity my missile defense is already designed to cope with). So, my missile defense won't be nearly as overstrained - I'll have more than twice as much time to shoot at them as they cross my defense envelope, and my defensive fire-control software will be much more capable of handling the situation. Even ignoring the tracking difference, just having twice as much time to shoot at them argues for being able to stop twice as many missiles.

Let's also say that I will push my screen out farther in front of my wall than usual. At spindle, the launch went straight for the superdreadnaughts. So, pushing out the screen forces a bad choice on the manties - either having their missiles running a much longer gauntlet of defensive fire (and activating their EW earlier) than usual, or wasting precious time shooting the screen out of the way before going after the SDs. (And they don't have very much of that time.)

Between the additional time for defensive fire, the better ability of defensive fire control to cope, more effective screening dispositions, and the manties' capabilities not coming as a surprise, I'm guessing that my missile defense will be at least three or four times as effective, meaning that even a force slightly smaller than Crandall's will be able to come close to handling the salvos the manties can throw. (This is partly the rationale for my chosen force size - it's roughly the minimum number of ships that I think would be necessary to defend itself.)

On the offensive side, this time I can actually shoot back. The range of a Cataphract is ~8.5 million KM in sprint mode, and single-drive missiles can reach 1.7 million KM in sprint mode and ~7.5 million KM in endurance mode. If I drop out of hyper 1 million KM outside the resonance zone heading towards it with the maximum velocity I can bring in a crash translation, with Cataphracts I've got missile flight times of ~80 seconds (or ~110 seconds with standard missiles) on anything within 4 million KM. Even RMN ships on alert will need at least a little bit of time to react and begin firing, while I will be at battle stations and have RD launch commands locked in on translation to find my targets. I can have a variety of fire plans pre-calculated for different target locations and arrangements, so I can probably begin firing at least as quickly as the defenders, if not moreso, and the Manties will almost certainly be within Cataphract range of the terminus (if not single-drive missile range).

At that point, while the RMN missiles, fire control (and so salvo size per ship), point defense, and penetration and defensive EW are better, my wall has a hell of a lot more missiles and raw point defense firepower. In this situation the manties are in deep trouble - even from internal tubes alone my SDs are firing almost 1500 shipkillers per salvo, plus maybe half as many missiles from my screen, plus my pod alpha strike. Manty missile defense is good, but I highly doubt it's good enough for 3 Sag-Cs and 4 Rolands to stand off that kind of firepower. It's essentially a shootout at point blank range, and even the manties will only have time for a few salvos before my missiles start arriving. I'll take hits and probably lose a few ships, but the manties are toast.

The second half, the assault on Idaho through the terminus, is a much trickier prospect, mostly because of the low ceiling on a mass transit. Basically I can put about 12.5 SDs through in one go (or, more likely, 10 SDs plus a couple squadrons of BCs and CLs), which isn't a lot of metal to confront RMN ships, especially because I'll have to maneuver clear of the terminus before I can raise my wedges and sidewalls, launch RDs, or fire CMs or shipkillers (which RFC has said can take up to a couple minutes depending on the terminus). If any RMN ships are within single-drive missile range of the terminus when I transit and are quick enough firing (or if the terminus is covered by mines), then any assault is doomed.

If I have explicit orders to try anyway, honestly I can't see any other option than to just throw the heaviest possible mass transit through and hope for the best. If the manties are stupid enough to not have mined the terminus, and if their mobile forces are far enough away from it that I can maneuver clear before their missiles arrive, and if they're not so far away that they're out of Cataphract range, then I can probably take them out with a maximum strength Cataphract-C pod salvo, but likely at the cost of most of my assault force since it will no longer have the critical mass of missile defense to let it stand off the manties return fire. If all of that somehow goes to plan, then one of the surviving transiting units can come back through after the 4 hour destabilization and let me know to send through more SDs to actually hold the other side. If nothing comes back, well, I can at least blockade this side and prevent the manties from using the bridge.

Let's say that it is Pym that is tasked to take the string of wormholes back for the SLN's usage. He's smart enough to realize that the almighty SLN isn't all that mighty, so...

Likely he asks for enough firepower to do the job. So, if I'm Pym, what I'm interested in doing is attacking a middle junction and trapping the RMN forces at the far end into fighting on my turf. I'm not going to attack Zunker, I'm going one upstream, so that any RMN force retreating through the wormhole is in my attack basket. I'm also going to jump in or even attempt the "sneak in from the other side of the primary" approach, etc. on the junction defensive force, on the theory that Idaho, etc. likely don't have the sensor net of a Haven, Manticore, or Core world.

So, let's say I jump in on the far side of the Idaho primary with a large number of Nevada's or Indefatigables, screening ships, etc. and a pod collier, arm up to tow maximum amounts of Cataphract pods pwith long duration particle shields], accelerate to maybe .1C and then come in around the primary on a ballistically predetermined course.

If the attack succeeds, the Zunker force is cut off and that terminus is effectively in SLN control because the RMN isn't going to attempt a wormhole transit to take it back. If it doesn't, then the SLN force hypers back out without losing to many ships, rearm, rinse an repeat.

There is the ever present issue that your opponent is making plans as well. They will be making their plans based on giving themselves the greatest number options to choose from when taking actions. Never assume that they will do what you want them to do or have only what you expect them to have. Then no matter how much you plan you are at the mercy of the competency of your on the spot commanders.

Lets face it most of SLN commanders we have seen so far have been arrogant idiots. That are easy to bait into doing something stupid.

The key to making anything like this work is getting the fight to where you have a positive correlation of forces (to steal an old Soviet phrase). So you need to somehow surprise them, as a long range closing battle just won't work. The obvious approach is to hyper jump on top of them, but there are others. It's really hard to stay highly alert for weeks on end when nothing interesting happens.