So in my latest reread of the series, I actually just hit the Second Hancock, first combat use of the Shrikes. Now obviously, there initial strike attacking the Havenite pods was from surprise but let's recap it all.
Havenite task force:
30+ Battleships
10-12 Heavy cruisers
half dozen destroyers
Manticoran forces:
96 Shrikes - first generation
Shrike ambush to destroy pods, Minotaur firing her first salvo of MDM's, and Truitt's task group only actually killed 3 battleships, 2 destroyers and 6 heavy cruisers (one of which actually died from one of the battleships shooting it accidentally). During this first strike, 4 Shrikes were complete casualties, and 1 damaged so heavily it pulled out of the battle.
Admiral Truitt's fleet turned to cut the chord on the Havenites, and kept launching missiles until they ran out of missiles, while the Shrikes kept scissoring.
By the time Truitt fell out of range, a total of 4 additional battleships have died (book says a total of 9 out of 33 have now died), all tin cans are destroyed and only 2 badly damaged heavy cruisers are left. At this point, 75 Shrikes are still intact out of the initial 96.
Shrikes were on their last attack, when the Havenite flagship took crippling damage and Porter finally takes command, giving the scatter order that brought utter destruction to the battleships.
All of that information is condensed from Chapter 33, Echoes of Honor. An intact wall of battle is certainly devastating to LACs, but that was also 3+ squadrons of battleships, versus the LACs carried aboard a single CLAC, also admittedly the very first battle, so surprise was still a factor.
Later Buttercap offensive, and beginning of the second Havenite War actually continued to prove however, that a LAC strike that has similar numbers will still be deadly even to unbroken walls of battle. However throughout the Second Haven War, when both sides had LAC's and used CLAC's offensively, they never ever actually brought meaningful numbers, the war was almost entirely carried out by podnoughts alone.
My rough guess, is that it would take at least 2 divisions of CLAC's to every intact waller squadron you plan to attack, even if it turns out to be another Battle of Manticore and you're throwing LACs at 400+ superdreadnoughts moving in formation.
For that notional BoMa repeat, you'd need 200 CLAC's worth of LACs; which would be carrying 24,000 LAC's if they are Manticoran CLACs. Of that 24,000 Manticoran LACs, if you excluded any Katana's would be a mix of 19,000 Shrike-Bravo's and 5,000 Ferrets. Shrike Bravo's are essentially the LAC version of the cruiser weight Mark 16 mod-G missile, the firepower of old-style wallers, in cruiser size.
If memory serves, at the real BoMa the Manticoran LAC's had less than half my theoretical requirement and were coming in at maximum acceleration with near zero EW used. And after they smashed through the devastated Havenite screen, literally could not slow down enough to re-organize before they were already flying through the Havenite podnoughts.
On a slightly aside here, the LAC crews knew they were already doomed, so why did none of them try to accelerate, and deliberately ram a sidewall?
Honor of the Queen, Ch 33 wrote:but the final quartet came on, and an alarm screamed on Lieutenant Ash's panel.
The lieutenant's head whipped around in horror. He had less than a single second to realize that somehow these missiles had been programmed to use his EW systems, as if his decoys were homing beacons, not defenses, and then they rammed headlong into their target.
Two of them vanished in sun-bright fireballs that shook Thunder to her keel as twin, 78-ton hammers struck her sidewall at .25 C . For all their fury, those two were harmless, but their sisters' sidewall penetrators functioned as designed.
Ok, LAC's don't have sidewall penetrators, but an impact from a 78 ton missile at 0.25c with penetrators, and a 20 kton LAC impacting at the same velocity without penetrators, is that not simply a case of finesse (using the considerably smaller, penetrators) and brute force (using an entire LAC) to drop sidewalls?
Rough on the LACs sure, but a handful that deliberately accelerate ahead of the pack and slam into sidewalls to forcibly drop them, doubles the effective range of the Shrike's; and at that range the podnoughts wouldn't be able to roll before the light-speed grasers had already arrived and savaged them.
