JeffEngel wrote:Daryl wrote:Theemile, your comment
"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...."
assumes that the SLN naval personnel were prepared to do mass kamikaze attacks, with millions dying in each wave until they overwhelmed the defenders. Would you volunteer for the first wave?
SLN doctrine has always been about applying massive numbers to a problem, since they've got massive numbers. That hasn't been primarily about wormhole assaults, but as a way of thinking, it's plausible that the planners would go for that kind of approach.
That said, those plans will run into problems when the officers responsible for carrying them out - or even just doing the ordering, in some cases - consider the casualty implications. Attrition through massive numerical superiority may reduce casualties, when it does mean massive superiority locally and in that battle. It's not so applicable when you're taking unanswered blows without getting anything in (typical RMN-SLN encounters) or feeding your numbers a bit at a time through under exceptional disadvantages (any wormhole assault).
The fact that SLN doctrine and SLN willingness to apply it may diverge is another aspect of the SLN just not being ready for a war.
I think Tsang had the wildly optimistic assumption that the 20% or so of possible remaining Junction defenses still there and operable would be - contrary to all training or doctrine on the Manticoran end - so shocked to see SLN wallers coming through that they wouldn't fire before her wallers would be firing on them, demanding their surrender, and/or out of their range. She was figuring she wasn't conducting an actual wormhole assault so much as a surprise transit that would awe the defenders into becoming spectators.
It's not less stupid by any means - it's just different or additional stupidity. A better way to put it is that it's the result of coming from a culture that's had several hundred years of peace and the assumption that serious warfare isn't something that happens to the Solarian League - it's a throwback limited to Verge neobarbarians, and the mighty League just has to show up to make them roll over. Sure, there have been a couple freak anomalies out in Talbott, but the frothing madwoman Gold Peak isn't here and this is the Manticoran home system, so they've got to be terrified of the SLN showing up.
Adding to Jonathan's comments, is the military tradition that soldiers are supposed to lay down their lives, without concern, for the military good. From the Roman "Morituri te Salutant" to Kipling's "It is not for us to reason why, it is just for us to do and die" there is the recurring assumption that all soldiers will die, knowingly ignorant of the greater cause, or their relative part in it, under their assumption that their death was necessary to achieve that greater plan.
It's a bit of hogwash, especially when everyone knows their leaders heads are shoved so far up their respective leader's rumps, and so on, that no on can see the forest for the trees.
And as for the SLN's willingness, what do yo think Tang and the 2nd wave against Manticore forming at Tasmania were supposed to be? The was even talk of Filareta's force dying to wear the Manties down for the next, larger attack if necessary. Short of 10,000,000 idiots in spacesuits with rifles floating toward the junction, if Rampajet plan is not the space version not planning human waves, I don't know what is.
....And no, I would not personally volunteer to die in that blaze of disglory.