SLN Logistics

Since large deployments are very rare, I wonder if their existing logistics was even capable of supporting military action, even before the closure of the terminii and loss of manticore merchant ships.

They might be able to for the short term, but I doubt it can be sustained for long, and would falter under nearly any opposition.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:But the fleet train involves a lot more than just freighters to haul supplies for the fleet. That is a part of it but they involve anything from Hospital ships, repair ships, maybe ships with workshops onboard and any number of other ships dedicated to the maintenance of the fleet.

The SLN either does, or does not have the specialist ships needed for a proper fleet train. They may have a repair ship at every SLN base, only major bases, or they may contract on an as needed basis from the civilian sector. They probably use some mixture of all those options.

[snip]

tl;dr

We don't know enough to talk about any "fleet train" except freighters.

One datapoint — Crandall's task force, as listed in SftS:

Reprise had stopped accelerating and started coasting ballistically twenty-six minutes earlier. During that interval, her recon platforms had reached their destinations, spreading out to englobe the planet Meyers at a range of barely fifteen light-seconds. At that distance, there could be no mistake. There really were seventy-one Solarian superdreadnoughts, accompanied by sixteen battlecruisers, twelve heavy cruisers, twenty-three light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers orbiting the planet.
Not to mention three repair ships, what have to be a couple of dozen stores ships, and what looks like a pair of straight ammunition carriers. It would appear New Tuscany isn't the only star system out this way benefitting from Battle Fleet's attention of late, he thought ironically.

[Bolding added.]

SYED wrote:Since large deployments are very rare, I wonder if their existing logistics was even capable of supporting military action, even before the closure of the terminii and loss of manticore merchant ships.

Bill Woods wrote:One datapoint — Crandall's task force, as listed in SftS:

<quoted textev>

I don't recall precise numbers, but the one data point Bill quoted suggests that Adm Filareta probably had even more of a "Fleet Train" than Crandall. Between them they possibly had a majority of SLN owned fleet train assets.

I suspect SYED is correct that the SLN owned fleet train assets were insufficient for much more of a deployment than Crandall and Filareta's combined task forces. The SLN probably has a contingency plan similar to the US Navy's contingency plan to contract civilian shipping in the event of war. The SLN's problem is that the civilian shipping they planned on isn't available. Even if the SLN has the repair ships and ammo carriers needed, (which they probably don't,) they don't have the carrying capacity available to support them, let alone the warships.

Bill Woods wrote:One datapoint — Crandall's task force, as listed in SftS:

Reprise had stopped accelerating and started coasting ballistically twenty-six minutes earlier. During that interval, her recon platforms had reached their destinations, spreading out to englobe the planet Meyers at a range of barely fifteen light-seconds. At that distance, there could be no mistake. There really were seventy-one Solarian superdreadnoughts, accompanied by sixteen battlecruisers, twelve heavy cruisers, twenty-three light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers orbiting the planet.
Not to mention three repair ships, what have to be a couple of dozen stores ships, and what looks like a pair of straight ammunition carriers. It would appear New Tuscany isn't the only star system out this way benefitting from Battle Fleet's attention of late, he thought ironically.

[Bolding added.]

That helps explain one of the points I was trying to make earlier, thanks.

Crandall's 140(71 SDs) warships were on a long-term mission and they had >24 freighters with stores along. Two ammo ships! Since they weren't expecting any combat, only three repair ships too.

Filareta's ~500(~420 SDs) were on a short, quick operation, with an expected return a fraction of the outbound journey. They would not need as many stores freighters. Enough troop transports for 400,000 marines(which could be crammed into as few as 10-12 ships equivalent to the PRH's old Longstops). More repair ships, maybe hospitals as well. Ammo ships to haul their pods - and compared to the GA, they had very few pods.

11th Fleet was also delayed waiting for Cataphract missiles - if the Mesans only sent enough to fill every ship's magazines once then there would be no point in those ammo ships accompanying the fleet, unless they were to bring along the older missiles they'd replaced.

I really don't think Filareta had more than 40 or 50 ships in his fleet train. Proportionately, that's a lot less support than Crandall's force had.

Most logistical ships would be posted at naval stations and depots, when not on a specific mission. They should be a priority, since I doubt they have very many, and they would be totally unprepared to defend themselves. This would force them to conscript or confiscate civilian version, escalating the merchant ship situation.

Weird Harold wrote:
A "squadron of the wall" consists of 6 or 8 DNs or SDs -- logically, one DN or SD carries the same sort of supplies that the rest of the squadron's ships would need.

Yeah...so? That SD would carry 1/6th of the supplies or 1/8th of the supplies that the squadron needs... assuming that you the ship in question needed absolutely no supplies of it's own.

An SD has limited cargo capabilities for it's size since a lot of the space that a cargo ship normally has is devoted to weapons, sensors, all sorts of other equipment, redundancies through the wazoo, and munitions for the weapons plus armor and quarters for 6,000 people.

An SD might have enough missiles for 1 other SD or 1/5th or 1/7th load for the other SD's same goes for all other supplies and spares. But is an SD capable of spreading it's ammunition through the rest of the squadron or does it require a special ship to do that?
Can 1 F-16 transfer it's missiles and fuel to another midflight or does it need to return to an airbase or carrier to do that? If it can transfer fuel midflight then what does it do to get back to base when it gives out it's fuel or do they fuel only partially? Meaning 10 fighters give 10% of their fuel to keep one in the air?

Weird Harold wrote:Cross-load every bit of supplies not needed to go back to base and resupply from one DN/SD to as many other DNs/SDs as you can, and you have a big, nearly empty,

When you add armour, weapons, redundancies for hundreds of systems, quarters for 6,000 people etc... how much cargo space can a nearly empty SD really have?


There is also a difference in what you can store if you have a big empty 100m X 100m X 100m box vs the same space but with say 100 rooms of 7.5m X 7.5m X 7.5m and a small 1m X 2m door to each of those tooms with the remaining volume being spread out in heavy armor for all those 100 rooms plus walkways etc...

Compare an SD to a Trojan Class Q-ship, can the SD put 12 LAC's in it's cargo space? Even though they are similar in size? If you took out 3,000 sailors and all the missiles the SD has, can you fit 12 LAC's in the quarters of those 3,000 people?

Weird Harold wrote: ship with spaces designed to hold the kind of missiles and other supplies needed by other ships of that type in the squadron.

It's really a simple concept.

It is a simple concept, 8 ships in a squadron, say each ship has 1,000 missiles for the sake of this argument. Of those 8 ships, 7 use up all of their ammunition and the 8th ship resupplies them... with all of 142 missiles each if it even can transfer those missiles without the help of a specifically designed vessel for deep space reloading. What about Fuel and food? What about spare parts? What happens when 5 of the 7 remaining ships show up with various degree of damage and that one SD has no capability to act like a repair ship?

Weird Harold wrote:
The SLN either does, or does not have the specialist ships needed for a proper fleet train. They may have a repair ship at every SLN base, only major bases, or they may contract on an as needed basis from the civilian sector. They probably use some mixture of all those options.

We do know from the books that:
1)Manticore has one of the if not the best fleet train in any Navy due to the fact that up until they build the alliance they needed to maintain various stations without proper support bases.

2)Haven had build a serious of major frontier bases to support their conquest. Their wars were built around short fights with major bases close by to resupply and repair if needed and only in the later parts of the first war did they star getting the capable fleet train.

3)The SLN has spend the last 6 centuries being the big bad wolf that no one will ever mess with. Over the previous 2 centuries before the current date in the story it was bigger than all other navies combined. Because there were no real active threats to them they concentrated most of not all of their wallers in a few core systems. The SLN does not need to think in terms of substantial fleet train because almost all of their potential enemies would be a one system nation which means that they would need limited fleet train, they would move in, destroy the enemy fleet and occupy the system then they would repair their ships at their leisure. Their thinking went in a way that they would see a potential enemy multi system nation 100 years before it becomes a threat and they would take appropriate action.

Weird Harold wrote:The thing is that we have no idea what the arrangement is for ANY navy in the Honorverse.

The way the writer built this universe we can clearly see parallels to our world. Look at the requirements for a fleet train that the US navy had in the Pacific during World War 2 and we can see what a fleet would require.

Weird Harold wrote: The only thing we have any basis for speculation about is the freighter availability. We know that because of Lacoon, the Solarian League only has about 20% of the freighters available pre-lacoon and Manticore has a bunch of unemployed civilian freighters.

We can also speculate why Manticore would have plenty of repair ships available and why Manticore would have those ships deployed into forward bases and stations. After all what kind of ships did they specifically recall after oyster bay? Ill give you a hint they were repair ships.

Weird Harold wrote:Actual "Fleet Train" assets -- those directly owned by a Navy -- are mostly unknown for anyone except Manticore. We know they have dedicated transports of the JMTS(?) class that are smaller and faster than typical civilian freighters. There are some revelations about other logistics support in SoV but this is NOT a spoiler thread, so I'll say no more.

As I said above, as long as you know a little bit of history, you can infer what a fleet train would consist of in the honorverse.

Weird Harold wrote:As far as SLN "Fleet Train" assets other than freighters, they are no better or worse equipped than they were before Lacoon and the (presumed) loss of Filareta's and Crandall's fleet train.

They would be, because they have build their fleet around the assumption that there are no actual threats they face and since they build that assumption they also assumed they would see any potential threats from decades before they became actual threats and take steps to correct any problems.

Weird Harold wrote:We don't know enough to talk about any "fleet train" except freighters.

You might not, but I know enough to be able to...

Jonathan_S wrote:I still don't expect them to be so arrogent that they inconvenience themselves by bringing big, slow, vulnerable freighters into combat situations. It's actually less hassle to leave them nearby than to haul them all the way into the system.

Plus what arrogant Admiral wants to be tied to ugly slow transports? The warships can put on a much more impressive show if they aren't trailing a gaggle of support ships behind them

Why not? You, the big bad SLN admiral shows up in my system with your fleet train in tow has to have a devastating impact on the enemy... if the enemy in question was technologically equal or inferior. It says I know you can't do anything to me and I brought my fleet train so I don't have to waste time getting it later.

munroburton wrote:
That helps explain one of the points I was trying to make earlier, thanks.

Crandall's 140(71 SDs) warships were on a long-term mission and they had >24 freighters with stores along. Two ammo ships! Since they weren't expecting any combat, only three repair ships too.

Filareta's ~500(~420 SDs) were on a short, quick operation, with an expected return a fraction of the outbound journey. They would not need as many stores freighters. Enough troop transports for 400,000 marines(which could be crammed into as few as 10-12 ships equivalent to the PRH's old Longstops). More repair ships, maybe hospitals as well. Ammo ships to haul their pods - and compared to the GA, they had very few pods.

11th Fleet was also delayed waiting for Cataphract missiles - if the Mesans only sent enough to fill every ship's magazines once then there would be no point in those ammo ships accompanying the fleet, unless they were to bring along the older missiles they'd replaced.

I really don't think Filareta had more than 40 or 50 ships in his fleet train. Proportionately, that's a lot less support than Crandall's force had.

Ok he might have had less freighters, but he most definitely expected combat and I doubt he went anywhere with only 18 repair ships. If he got reinforcements then likely he went with a lot more repair ships as many as the SLN could get their hands on. With Manticore, the freighters they depend on are gone, but when they went to fight Manticore they brought ammunition ships for their ship board missiles not even considering the Pods provided by Mesa. I doubt even the SLN would go to a major battle without at least some reserve ammunition close by when they are so far from home.

Would the admiral have a discretionary fund? Money to pay expenses for operating in the field. If he can find ways to save money, he might find a way to slip the extra in his pocket. So repairing or restoring supplies would eat into this.