Turning points in the RMN/RHN war

cthia wrote:But what Grayson tech and presence gave them was strategic scope, impetus and the all important entity of "time."

Would Manticore have had enough ticks left on the clock by the referee's watch had it not been for Grayson? That's why the Queen insistently courted them so hard.

I can concede a bit that courting Yeltsin was to buy time, but Haven was also scrambling to get an 'ally' out of Masada too, due to Honor's blowing their covert operation to occupy Basilisk for the terminus. So that's also a pretty major point, Haven failing to annex Basilisk really cost them alot, even though that's again pre-war.

Maybe I'm just being a bit rules-lawyer, you did observe we're looking at turning points of the war, which would be the First Battle of Hancock, and Third Yeltsin which were respectively the two opening strikes of the war. Both of which were defeated, and then riposts from the RMN occupied many of the bases closest to Manticoran Anti-Haven Alliance territory, as described in the early chapters of Field of Dishonor.

If we expand to the cold war and pre-strikes:
-Duquesne Plan by the Legislaturalists, because their actions ultimately led to being supplanted by Pierre
-Project Gram, which ultimately led to Ghost Rider, MDM's, podnoughts and all the rest of the RMN's toys and in the short-term gave the RMN the ability to resist at all
-Pierre establishing his Committee of Public Safety and his People's Commissioners which castrated the People's Navy and massively reduced their effectiveness

Somtaaw wrote:

cthia wrote:But what Grayson tech and presence gave them was strategic scope, impetus and the all important entity of "time."

Would Manticore have had enough ticks left on the clock by the referee's watch had it not been for Grayson? That's why the Queen insistently courted them so hard.

I can concede a bit that courting Yeltsin was to buy time, but Haven was also scrambling to get an 'ally' out of Masada too, due to Honor's blowing their covert operation to occupy Basilisk for the terminus. So that's also a pretty major point, Haven failing to annex Basilisk really cost them alot, even though that's again pre-war.

Maybe I'm just being a bit rules-lawyer, you did observe we're looking at turning points of the war, which would be the First Battle of Hancock, and Third Yeltsin which were respectively the two opening strikes of the war. Both of which were defeated, and then riposts from the RMN occupied many of the bases closest to Manticoran Anti-Haven Alliance territory, as described in the early chapters of Field of Dishonor.

If we expand to the cold war and pre-strikes:
-Duquesne Plan by the Legislaturalists, because their actions ultimately led to being supplanted by Pierre
-Project Gram, which ultimately led to Ghost Rider, MDM's, podnoughts and all the rest of the RMN's toys and in the short-term gave the RMN the ability to resist at all
-Pierre establishing his Committee of Public Safety and his People's Commissioners which castrated the People's Navy and massively reduced their effectiveness

I guess I should be bound by the rules of the thread.

Though I have a persistent resurging aversion to the lack of counting the "jockeying for position" of pre-war, as war. It's all the same to me; especially when all parties involved know that it's a matter of time - time which all adversaries are trying to buy.

I certainly can buy into your nomination of GRAM. I consider the Ghost Rider and all of the spin-off tech to be in the same category (turning point tech) as the Spencer Rifles in the American Civil War.

The Peeps never really countered even the EW tech.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:Not that I disagree. I'd just like for you to elaborate. It's just that I'd've thought the second coup would qualify as more of a turning point, pro Peeps. Post second coup, they certainly "got themselves back on balance" as a certain celery chaser is fond of quilling. Says White Haven at Trevor's Star as well - a lesson that tore a strip of white arse out of that Haven.

They lost most of their highly competent leadership and put crazy political limits on the survivors. They basically threw away the time they had due to the idiocy of the SKM pols who refused to authorize a serious war. Basically, they threw away the time and material they had to win the war early and decisively and turned it into a war they were not prepared to fight.

Not to mention saddling them with the promise of retribution, to one and one's family, with the ever present People's Commissioners riding herd.

Which, comes right back to the Second coup that I nominate, which became very real with Shannon's "OOPS" moment - solidified with Theisman's "Goodbye Citizen Admiral" - political turning point?

You just can't keep kicking an obedient dog. The RHN was that dog -- sooner or later that dog will have had ENUFF!

Somtaaw wrote:Additionally, while Grayson has definitely been a net-positive for Manticore, the majority of their technology increases would have come regardless of Grayson's help, with the exception of improved compensators and eventually Katana's.

Ghost Rider would have come along anyways, along with beta-squared's and MDM's. As long as Manticore could still have played out the initial opening battles, which the only major 'change' if Grayson had been nuked, would have been the future ambush of Parnell by White Haven would have been in a different location. And then small future battles, like Sidemore versus Second Fleet aided by Protector's Own, etc would have been different.

Well much of it was offscreen but Buttercup and beyond Grayson built up a substantial wall of modern podlayers, and those numbers told. Especially in the post ceasefire era where first their intervention possibly saved Trevor's Star, and certainly prevented additional attritional loses to the RMN there, and second fielded near to half the Alliance's modern wall from immediately post Thubderbolt era up until the Adermandi units started coming out of refit in substantial numbers (then later the percentage probably dropped again after the Python Lump came online).
Without those raw numbers of heavy ships Manticore doesn't look to have had a chance after Thunderbolt.

OTOH without Grayson and its fleet at a minimum the ceasefire build down might have been less drastic, or Haven might have felt confident in their military edge sooner and triggered the confrontation that led them to Thinderbolt back when they had lower force levels... Hard to say.
But still Grayson contribed far more than just R&D fodder.

To put my 2 cents (maybe even a whole nickel)

There were multiple milestones and turning points

(1) the taking (or liberation)of Trevor's Star being both a milestone and a turning point as it provided a reasonably secure staging area deep in what had been PRH territory.

(2) Second Hancock, although a comparatively minor battle, had large consequences -- The PRH and PN knew they had been hit very hard, but they had confused / inconsistent reports on WHAT had hit them. They were looking over their shoulders after that unsure of what (or which) new threat to expect.

(3) Basilisk Terminus. Although Giscard wreaked the orbital infrastructure, Darlington was unable to take the terminus, which was the true goal of the raid. If they HAD managed to take the terminus, it (a) would have been a near reversal of taking Trevor's Star (b) could have resulted in severe damage to Home Fleet if they had been used in relief.
The surviving PN Destroyers, all 4-6 of them, were only able to report that there were a $hitload of missiles that took out the rest of Darlington's fleet. Either the intel on the Junction Forts missile pod supply was very off, or there was ANOTHER new Manty weapon system to face.

-- Stewart

Operation Hassan?

cthia wrote:Which, comes right back to the Second coup that I nominate, which became very real with Shannon's "OOPS" moment - solidified with Theisman's "Goodbye Citizen Admiral" - political turning point?

No, the war was decisively lost by that point.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Additionally, while Grayson has definitely been a net-positive for Manticore, the majority of their technology increases would have come regardless of Grayson's help, with the exception of improved compensators and eventually Katana's.

Ghost Rider would have come along anyways, along with beta-squared's and MDM's. As long as Manticore could still have played out the initial opening battles, which the only major 'change' if Grayson had been nuked, would have been the future ambush of Parnell by White Haven would have been in a different location. And then small future battles, like Sidemore versus Second Fleet aided by Protector's Own, etc would have been different.

Well much of it was offscreen but Buttercup and beyond Grayson built up a substantial wall of modern podlayers, and those numbers told. Especially in the post ceasefire era where first their intervention possibly saved Trevor's Star, and certainly prevented additional attritional loses to the RMN there, and second fielded near to half the Alliance's modern wall from immediately post Thubderbolt era up until the Adermandi units started coming out of refit in substantial numbers (then later the percentage probably dropped again after the Python Lump came online).
Without those raw numbers of heavy ships Manticore doesn't look to have had a chance after Thunderbolt.

OTOH without Grayson and its fleet at a minimum the ceasefire build down might have been less drastic, or Haven might have felt confident in their military edge sooner and triggered the confrontation that led them to Thinderbolt back when they had lower force levels... Hard to say.
But still Grayson contribed far more than just R&D fodder.

I actually did observe Grayson contributed slightly more than just R&D fodder, I bolded the tiny bit where I observed that. I just didn't really go into detail, because the stone ripples of Grayson 'not' being there is really hard to predict beyond the initial short-term. Then events start to get complicated, like you observed it's possible Thunderbolt may have kicked off much earlier, and Janacek may not have built down as much... those become too hard to truly quantify.

The only battles we can say with certainty would have been slightly different, is how/where/when Parnell kicked off his side of the opening strikes of the war. He initially target Grayson simply because he was already seeing that they were helping Manticore considerably. They were also the Primary Ally, he wanted to knock all the other allies into second-guessing the Alliance. Without Grayson, I'd almost guess at Alizon being the next target, they were the next 'best' built up after Grayson and if we exclude Erewhon who were late-joiners to the Alliance.

But the ambush would have happened almost regardless, because Grayson wasn't involved with the misleading of the Havenite Ambassador's spy net, and the whole "we're sending 4 squadrons out of Grayson but we're really sneaking 4 more into it" would have still happened. Substitute Grayson for Alizon, and it's plausible it would happen with much the same result.

No, they went after Grayson because it was the thinnest part of the Alliance's perimeter, through which they had the most direct path to Manticore.

We would assemble our forces at DuQuesne Base in the Barnett System, far enough inside the frontier that Manticore couldn't tell what we were up to. From there, we'd attack southwest against Yeltsin, the thinnest point in their perimeter. With Yeltsin in our hands, we would advance directly against Manticore, taking out the bases on our flanks to protect our rear as we went. Losses would be higher than a successful Perseus One, but we'd avoid the risk of the total destruction of our forces which Perseus One entails.

It was also the site of one of the largest detachments of the RMN's wall, so taking it out in a surprise attack with overwhelming force would have changed the balance of power significantly.

But regardless, Grayson itself was pretty irrelevant to the decision to attack Yeltsin's Star. It was all about its strategic position and the RMN's presence.

Without Yeltsin, and absent a similarly strong outpost between Yeltsin and Manticore [which I don't think was possible], Parnell would almost certainly have considered the direct strike at Manticore to be his best option.

Short victorious war, very short series. In fact, ISTR that in retrospect at least one Peep viewed 1st Yeltsin, Nightingale & 2nd Yeltsin as the actual opening battles of the war. [or was that some Barfly? after all these years one forgets who said what ]

Duckk wrote:No, they went after Grayson because it was the thinnest part of the Alliance's perimeter, through which they had the most direct path to Manticore.

We would assemble our forces at DuQuesne Base in the Barnett System, far enough inside the frontier that Manticore couldn't tell what we were up to. From there, we'd attack southwest against Yeltsin, the thinnest point in their perimeter. With Yeltsin in our hands, we would advance directly against Manticore, taking out the bases on our flanks to protect our rear as we went. Losses would be higher than a successful Perseus One, but we'd avoid the risk of the total destruction of our forces which Perseus One entails.

It was also the site of one of the largest detachments of the RMN's wall, so taking it out in a surprise attack with overwhelming force would have changed the balance of power significantly.

But regardless, Grayson itself was pretty irrelevant to the decision to attack Yeltsin's Star. It was all about its strategic position and the RMN's presence.