"Obsolete SDs" Waste not...

Relax wrote:Look at militaries today. Even po-dunk militaries of small nations. It is roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000 as the ratio! […] USA: Pop ~320M, Military ~1.5M ~1:200

Yes.
But you forgot about prolong, health care and age limits. Today only a fraction of the population is capable to serve in the military. Everyone older than what – 50ish or something – is generally exempt anyway, and of those many are just not fit/healthy enough to serve.
If you take the US for example, out of the 320M less than half (145ish million, both male and female) are in the desired age range. Even less (120 million) are actually healthy enough to serve (personally I think the number is far lower but whatever).
With about 1.5 mill serving (actually less active personnell atm, but much more with deployable reserves) that’s actually about 1 out of 80.
If you compare this to Manticore…
The Manticoran Binary System is home to 3.6 billion people. All of them enjoy a standard of living higher than in the western world today.
With prolong, the age limits are much, much less of a problem. Apart from the last generation without prolong (which is basically dying from naturally causes during the time of the first war anyway) everyone can serve if he or she wants to.
Virtually everyone, sine the population is much healthier than today. In the Honorverse, practically all diseases are cureable, apart from serious injury or really rare and freaky health issues, there is no reason why any Manticoran wouldn’t be fit enough for military service.
Even pregnancies are a non-issue with prolong and tubing.
So all in all in the Manticoran Binary System there should be more than 2 billion people available for military service. Maybe even 2.5 billion.
If we apply the ratio the US manages comfortably today (which a much less educated/healthy population and not fighting a war for survival) that translates 25 to 31 million.
Or 4.000 to 5000 SLN Superdreadnoughts.

In an actual war? Easily ten times that.

Joat42 wrote:In my experience average people needs a lot of training before they are usable in a fight, especially so if they are going to handle any kind of machinery; and still they to the stupidest things.

And yet, the Peoples Republic got away with poorly educated conscripts manning their wallers. It wasn’t perfect but it worked well enough.

The objection isn't that Manticore couldn't find the personnel if it had to. It's that, assuming the average spacer costs $50,000 p/a, each of those old Solly SDs will eat $300,000,000 a year even if it only sits in a parking orbit with a strictly cannibalistic maintenance program.

Far better to spend that $300m of manpower on crewing LACs or SD(P)s.

Relax wrote:Shocking, with my entire family and extended family either in the military or part of the defense industry building the machines... yes, I do.

You are talking with a peace time mentality or that from a dominant power mentality. I don't blame you. You are talking from a giant bureaucratic overhead mentality where eggs and braid hen pecking is institutionalized and dragging their heels making sure nothing happens either good or bad allows them to increase their seniority as it is a guarantee that if something bad happens they are screwed in an up or out system. Why do you assume this gigantic bureaucratic institutionalized aversion to risk taking is true in the 2nd or 3rd world countries today? Let alone 2000 years from now in a non 1st world nation?

The very fact that a star nation is accepting all these hand me down SD's and small fry automatically would mean their mentality is vastly different from a stodgy cast in stone globally dominant military averse to risk.

Start by trying to put yourself in the shoes of a 2nd or 3rd class nation today and their limitations and their resources. Think about being very poor or a serf, slave, and not wanting to go back. Put yourself in the shoes of the immigrant today. They are the hardest working and most prone to risk taking.

As I said, most on this forum come from a very affluent 1st class nation state where all of their basic needs are taken care of and have been taken care of for generations. The mentality of waste not want not is simply not in your vocabulary.

IF China decided to to take Palawan Island, and if 20 Arleigh burke class destroyers were given to the Philippines they could man them in a mere few months. It doesn't take a genius to operate a ship or its sub systems. People aren't stupid. The only stupid people are those who think they are smart and educated.

You are still missing the point, who are going to train the people? And who are going to pay for it? Who are going to pay for the upkeep? Especially since most of the systems that would possibly want these wallers have marginal economies. And why would they want wallers? It's like giving people trains when they need cars and are currently using bi-cycles.

And no, it may not take a genius to operate a ship for a while - but I bet it takes training to utilize it correctly and keep it running, otherwise it's just a piece of floating junk.

And regarding your example of the destroyers, a better example is giving the Philippines a bunch of ships from the 1940's if we are going to compare it to the Solarian SD's.

Just because there is a will to use something, that doesn't mean it's practical or that they have the means or the knowledge to do it.

munroburton wrote:The objection isn't that Manticore couldn't find the personnel if it had to. It's that, assuming the average spacer costs $50,000 p/a, each of those old Solly SDs will eat $300,000,000 a year even if it only sits in a parking orbit with a strictly cannibalistic maintenance program.

The argument was about Manticores general manpower problems. Its not conceivable that they would have any problems to crew what they are able to fund/build.

Obviously commissioning sollie wallers is bs. But not because of costs. 300mio/year is laughable compared to what the ships cost. In Field of Dishonor a dreadnought was worth something like 32 billion Manti-$. I think there is a pearl somewhere about later Mantie SD(P) costing about the same.

Anyway, according to AAC Manticores maxed out funds when they built the 200 waller python lump. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 trillion Manti-$, not counting CLACs, missile production, R&D, stuff below the wall and auxiliaries. So total building cost could amount to something close to 15 trillion Manti-$. Granted, the cost will probably stretched over the building time at least, but its not comparable to personnel costs.

Even manning 100 SLN SDs amounts to just 30 billion a year. Barely the cost of a Dreadnought. So what.

About the 50.000… I wasn’t able to find it, but I swear there is textev of Honors actual income in one of the earlier books?

Star Knight wrote:
About the 50.000… I wasn’t able to find it, but I swear there is textev of Honors actual income in one of the earlier books?

Might have been Basilisk Station somewhere, or else is was probably tSVW (maybe the meeting between Henke and Honor regarding bumping one of their Chief Warrants I think?)

Somtaaw wrote:

Star Knight wrote:
About the 50.000… I wasn’t able to find it, but I swear there is textev of Honors actual income in one of the earlier books?

Might have been Basilisk Station somewhere, or else is was probably tSVW (maybe the meeting between Henke and Honor regarding bumping one of their Chief Warrants I think?)

In OBS we got an RMN commander's salary "Honor herself a tidy little half million so far (she'd discovered that even she could do that math easily enough), which was almost eight years' salary for an RMN commander"
So an RMN commander earned a little more than $62,500 / year.

So I did a search for "dollar" through the ebooks and didn't see any other references to salary. And the only $50,000 I found was in reference to prize money in SVW.

the Navy bought the other three in. Now, three percent of ninety-six billion dollars is two-point-eight-eight billion, and twelve percent of that is three hundred forty-five million, plus change. Which means, dear lady, that your share comes to a paltry eighty-six million four hundred thousand dollars—exclusive of the lighter vessels surrendered with them. Of course, they only added another six million to your total award, so I suppose we don't have to worry about them. Believe me, those figures are correct. In fact, if you look at page three, you'll see that the most junior enlisted person serving under you will receive almost fifty thousand dollars."

Interesting aside turned up in the search - I'd forgotten the Manticore had a $5 coin. But in the short story Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington, which RFC penned, he says "Honor finished making up her bunk (with regulation "Saganami Island" corners on the sheets and a blanket taut enough to bounce a five-dollar coin)". Guess they got over the silly US reluctance to go to coins instead of low value bills.

Star Knight wrote:

munroburton wrote:The objection isn't that Manticore couldn't find the personnel if it had to. It's that, assuming the average spacer costs $50,000 p/a, each of those old Solly SDs will eat $300,000,000 a year even if it only sits in a parking orbit with a strictly cannibalistic maintenance program.

The argument was about Manticores general manpower problems. Its not conceivable that they would have any problems to crew what they are able to fund/build.

Obviously commissioning sollie wallers is bs. But not because of costs. 300mio/year is laughable compared to what the ships cost. In Field of Dishonor a dreadnought was worth something like 32 billion Manti-$. I think there is a pearl somewhere about later Mantie SD(P) costing about the same.

Anyway, according to AAC Manticores maxed out funds when they built the 200 waller python lump. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 trillion Manti-$, not counting CLACs, missile production, R&D, stuff below the wall and auxiliaries. So total building cost could amount to something close to 15 trillion Manti-$. Granted, the cost will probably stretched over the building time at least, but its not comparable to personnel costs.

Even manning 100 SLN SDs amounts to just 30 billion a year. Barely the cost of a Dreadnought. So what.

About the 50.000… I wasn’t able to find it, but I swear there is textev of Honors actual income in one of the earlier books?

50k was a number plucked out of thin air. Seemed like a reasonable figure at the time, considering that the RMN pays for more than just the salary.

I concede that personnel costs do appear to be utterly dwarfed by the capital costs. Forgot quite how expensive those things were to build in the first place!

Thanks Jonathan_S, that was the quote I was looking for.

Now lets have some fun…
At best 63.000 M-$ a year as a Commander…

On Basilisk Station is set in 1901 PD, she was promoted to Commander in 1896 PD.
Today in the US, an O-5 with more than 4 years in grade makes close to 6300 US-$ a month (75600 US-$ in a year).
But OBS was written in 1993, back than an O-5 with over 4 years in grade was payed just over 3300 US-$ a month (crazy how things change).

Obviously we don’t know if the figures are comparable at all, RFC might have just picked it at random.
But lets take this further, we have nothing to do while waiting for SoV anyway.

Why does Honor get paid so much more money?

Manticore could just pay their officers more than the US does. Why not, its certainely possible, they hold their navy in high regard (well, just like the US does).

Honor could collect stuff like combat/space/hazardous pay which is already included in the figure. On the other hand, ‘eight years' salary for an RMN commander’ just sounds like basic pay to me.

The most likely reason however, Manticore enjoys a much higher standard of living than the US. Its GDP per capita should be much higher which should result in the state paying higher wages.
Obviously the overall price level would be comparatively higher which balances it out in the end.

The US GDP per Capita in 1993 was 26.441 US-$ and it had a population just shy of 260 million (again, crazy how things change).
This translates to a GDP of 6.878 Trillion US-$.

But back to the GDP per Capita, we can say that an O-5 officer in 1993 made about 150% of the GDP per Capita. This ratio is not constant however, today US military officers earn comparatively less (132% of the GDP per Capita). Its obvious why, the US federal government is broke and even overall, the increase of wages has not kept up with the growth of the economy over the last decades.
Further in the past the ratio was much better for serving officers, but the economy of 1960s America is not comparable to what we have now.

But lets try and apply those numbers to the Manticoran economy.
If we take the same 150% the US had in 1993 Manticores GDP per Capita would be 42.000 M-$, 1.6 times of what the US had in 1993.

Now it gets really interesting.

Is this realistic? In 1920 PD the Manticoran Binary System is home to 3.6 billion people. They had much less in 1901. I believe there is even a textev somewhere about population growth but I cant find it. Anyway, lets use a swag and say 3 billion in 1901.
With 42.000 M-$ and 3 billion people this translates to a GDP of 126 trillion M-$.

A huge number, but what can you do with it?

In 1993 the US spend 358 billion US-$ on defense. This was during the cold war cutbacks, if we extrapolate the spending in the late 1980s could have reached 450 billion easily.
450 billion out of 6.878 trillion is 7% of the GDP used for military spending. A healthy figure for a country involved in a war, cold or not.

Another way looking at it, the us federal budget in 1993 was something like 1.4 trillion US-$, pretty much 20% of the GDP. And of the budget almost 33% would have been used for defense. (during the cold war, defense regularly made up for more than 40% of the budget btw).

Now, i don’t think Manticores state budget is anywhere close to 20% of its GDP. But it think they spend more of it on defense than the US ever did after the Second World War (less social programs, especially before the High Ridge government).
So lets say (SWAG again) their budget is 10% of the GDP and they use 60% of the budget for military spending. !Lets be clear, this would be for 1901 during the high of the naval buildup but still on peacetime budgets.!

That gives them a little more than 7.5 trillion M-$ to fund their military.

Is this enough?

We know from the Pearls that Manticore had 186 SDs and 121 Ds commissioned in 1905.
And we know that the naval buildup of Roger III. stareted in the late 1850.
So in about 55 years Manticore managed to pay for over 300 wallers. And forts, and auxiliaries, and stuff below the wall. And R&D. And they actually paid their personnel and kept the navy going.

Does it add up? Yes it does.

300 wallers is just 5.5 every year. If we say all the other stuff is worth another 10 or so we end up at the equivalent of 15 wallers a year.
We know from the pearls (and maybe even the books) that building an SD did cost Manticore about 42 billion during the first havenite war. That’s 650 billion M-$. Out of a naval budget of 7.5 trillion (in 1901 at least) …….
Obviously I made some overly generous swags somewhere

But amazingly, its possible for the math to hold up on this.
At least if we do our best to ignore the Grayson economy and naval budgets…

Did you know they have only 80% of Manticores efficiency, the poorest in Manticore were 4 to 5 times as rich as the average Grayson and they had construction budgets of about 5 trillion during the first war while their total population was less than 3 billion?
That a GDP in the vicinity of 22 trillion M-$.

Using more than 20% of the GDP just to build starhsips is pretty much impossible. Especially on a planet like Grayson where vast amounts of ressources are needed to survive.

And never forget, during the second war more than a decade later, Manticore maxed on what was fundable with building the python lump which amounts to something like 15 trillion.

Grayson construction – never made any sense and never will.

munroburton wrote:I concede that personnel costs do appear to be utterly dwarfed by the capital costs. Forgot quite how expensive those things were to build in the first place!

Actually, I'm pretty sure there's either textev or a pearl indicating that in the long run, operational costs seriously outrun construction costs in the Honorverse (also, SDs are cheaper when you're building hundreds of them; the pre-unit cost of the last pre-Oyster Bay Invictuses was probably a lot less than M$32 billion).

In any case, I've always thought the captured SLN SDs, like the captured Havenite SD(P)s before them, were solutions in search of a problem. If you already have wallers, you don't want or need them, because you almost certainly have better wallers.

If you don't already have wallers, you almost certainly do not have the infrastructure to support a squadron of wallers (and at less than a squadron, you'd rather have a larger number of sub-wallers). Building that and training personnel (yes, we think Honorverse manpower issues are mostly ridiculous. However, they're a feature of the Honorverse) is going to take time and money, which would much more cost-effectively be spent on LACs, forts, and/or missile pods in the system defense role.

Relax wrote:

Weird Harold" quote="Relax wrote:No one wants to admit they are 2nd class and deserve 2nd class equipment. Or in this case, 3rd class.

I think you're being insulting to 3rd-class equipment.

Those who think the captured SLN SDs have any military value to anyone are under-estimating just how obsolete they are. It is much like advocating that HMS Victory and USS Constitution be given to Ethiopia as the core of their navy.

Most of the arguments for gifting the captured ships are good arguments for giving away the smaller ships, but the SDs should be reserved for any emerging nation Manticore wants to drive into bankruptcy.

They would only go bankrupt if they bought their systems etc from outside their own nations. Those bolt on systems etc, will boot strap their own manufacturing sectors to produce numerous side benefits as well as defense. And those so called obsolete "death traps" can still take 100++ capital grade missile hits unlike anything else around.

Those yammering about manning requirements of a mere 6000 is absurd. Lets look at a small Honorverse population 600,000,000. Doesn't make much sense for a single SD, but here goes:you need one in 100,000 out of your population to be supported. Now lets say you have a squadron of them along with supporting ships. This balloons into roughly 6000*8*2(support personnel) + same number for small fry = 250,000(round to 300,000) from a population of 600,000,000 = 1:2000! or Look at militaries today. Even po-dunk militaries of small nations. It is roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000 as the ratio!

Zambia: Pop 16M+, Military 19,000 Roughly 1:800 for a po-dunk back water 25% HIV infected populace, economy collapsing, corruption rampant, cesspool of humanity.

More corrupt backwaters:
Ghana: ~28M, Military 15,000, ~1:1800
Uganda: ~40M, Military 55,000, ~1:800
Khazakstan: Pop ~18M, Military 70,000 ~1:250

More prosperous:
Chile: Pop ~18M, Military 100,000 ~1:180
Brazil: Pop ~200M, Military 700,000 ~1:285

USA: Pop ~320M, Military ~1.5M ~1:200

And yet people on this forum, including the author are arguing there is a manning problem in the Honorverse?

And no, don't bring up "education". Average people are... yes that is right, average. Doesn't take long to learn. Military equipment is made for average brutes, not sophisticated ballerinas.

The biggest limitation is $$$/manhour. Why I laugh at those comparing how small the Chinese military is compared to the USA's. Their stuff costs vastly less, maintenance is less, manning requirements are less, because of $$$/manhour, making their military much larger than pure $$$ analysis says it is. Same goes for India.[/quote]


Your overlooking several facts. In some of the countries you mention the military does a lot more than what it is in the U.S.. In several countries the military provides a law enforcement function than any kind of military one. In several African nations, because of poaching is so rampant in wildlife parks. The local military backs up game control officers. Also a lot of those countries what kind of equipment do they have? Is it APC's and tanks or Land Rovers and pickup trucks. Most African nations are so poor that any military equipment will so obsolete as to be ridiculous, like using 40-50 year old AK-47's and T-54/55's and how well maintained is that equipment is it serviceable and functional or is it a step above yard art.