Battle of Manticore

MuonNeutrino wrote:This is a perfectly reasonable chain of events that the Manties might indeed have been expected to anticipate. Note, however, that this series of events has the the response fleet not even leaving havenite space until 2.5 months after the Battle of Lovat. Meanwhile, in the actual timeline, the Battle of Manticore took place on July 24, 1921 - *less* than two and a half months after Lovat, which happened May 15.

In other words, the plausibly anticipatable scenario you sketched out, once you account for travel time, doesn't have the Havenites possibly being able to attack the Manticore system until at least a month or two after the battle actually took place! This is the entire point of Weber's explanation about Theisman's pre-planning and pre-deployment throwing off the Alliance's planning. For clarity, let me repeat the pertinent part of that pearl (italics original):

What does it matter weather they attacked Manticore in July or in September? Do you think it would have changed the total surprise faced by Manticore? What if they had waited another month or two and someone decided to accelerate the next raid? If they caught 8th Fleet away from Trevor's Star this would have been a total disaster. And just why were they surprised? They had an enemy with a numerical advantage that was fleeting, an enemy who would be greatly motivated to move as fast as he can. There is absolutely no excuse for what happened... isent Manticore the one that consistently trains by using the most pessimistic criteria? Why did they choose to assume that they couldn't possibly attack that quickly?


They knew about the covering forces which means they knew that those forces could be redeployed without them even knowing. Depending on how many of them there were, and how far from Haven they were, they could have concentrated long before the Alliance clued in. They should have expected an attack immediately after Lovat simply because it would be their tradition to assign the enemy capabilities far better then they are likely to face, what they assumed was that there was no way that Theisman had the operation planned out, and would move fast enough to get there in less then x months.

Weber, in the pearls wrote:Thomas Theisman responded to the discovery that Apollo existed far more rapidly than anyone in the Alliance anticipated that he could.

Why? Was he an idiot or something?

That's in no small part because he'd already done all of the basic planning for Operation Beatrice before he found out Apollo existed... Theisman didn't have to stop, analyze what had happened, pull together a response plan, redeploy his assets, and go.

That is why when at war you plan, so that if an opportunity or the need pops up you can take advantage. Why are they surprised that Theisman planned Beatrice ahead of time when the RMN had planned out Lacoon 1 and 2 decades if not centuries ahead of time?

He'd already put together what he used as a response plan and redeployed his assets to carry it out, which cut at the very minimum weeks, and quite probably months, from the time which would otherwise have been required to get something like Beatrice off the ground and into Manticoran space. By which time Eighth Fleet would have been even more heavily reinforced with additional Apollo-capable SD(P)s and the system defense variant of Apollo, despite the bottlenecks, would have been deployed in strength.

And 8th Fleet might have been attacking a Havenite system and away from the Home System then so them being reinforced is pretty much irrelevant... As for Apollo? Anything they get would have to be split between Manticore, Grayson, Andermani and Trevor's Star not enough to tip the balance.

...The fact that Honor was off the terminus drilling her new ships threw a spanner into the timing of the response for Trevor's Star... [but] one of the reasons she felt secure in carrying out routine training operations was that, as I mentioned above, any massive offensive against the Manticoran home system specifically in response to Sanskrit couldn't be mounted that soon...

My question would be how soon did they think it could be done? Did they have a count down timer? Why would the RMN be planning an attack using 8th Fleet if it was also the strategic reserve for the Home System?

In other words, the alliance was *not* blind to the possibility that Haven might launch an attack on the Manticore system in response to the Battle of Lovat. They simply did not believe that any attack could be launched *that soon*, because they did not expect Theisman to not only have already planned an all-out attack (and not just a generic contingency plan, which would definitely be expected but which also would have to have been updated and drilled for before being used, but a plan specifically prompted by and devised for to the current war situation), but also to have *pre-concentrated and pre-positioned his forces* for the attack. It was *that* which cut literally months off of any response time the alliance could have reasonably anticipated.

He had several fleets capable of being diverted within short notice, he could have stripped Haven bare of SD(P)'s as well... when someone is in a desperate position, you don't assign what he can and cannot do...


The Alliance didn't believe that the People's Navy would launch something like Operation Icarus and look how well that worked out for them... making the same stupid assumption on a grander scale is inexcusable.


One last thing, didn't Tourville start drilling his fleet AFTER Lovat? I mean they did do some of the prep work before hand but Tourville didn't get his order if I remember correctly until after Lovat happened, so he got a plan from Theisman and a promise that he will get a fleet from pre-deployed assets yet he had no idea before Lovat.

Sigs wrote:What does it matter weather they attacked Manticore in July or in September?

Because, according to the author, if they had waited an extra month or two, Manticore would have been covered by system defense Apollo pods that would have massacred the attackers handily. Again, a quote from that pearl:

Weber, in the pearls wrote:...which cut at the very minimum weeks, and quite probably months, from the time which would otherwise have been required to get something like Beatrice off the ground and into Manticoran space. By which time Eighth Fleet would have been even more heavily reinforced with additional Apollo-capable SD(P)s and the system defense variant of Apollo, despite the bottlenecks, would have been deployed in strength.

That's Weber's statement, not mine, and it's not ambiguous - this entire section is in the context on why the admiralty felt confident in the security of the manticore system in particular, and so there's no way that line is talking about anywhere else. And the admiralty clearly expected that this deployment of pods would be enough to protect the home system, given that they *did* intend to release 8th fleet back to raiding duty, so it's not just a useless spreading-out of penny packets of pods over several systems. And so I'm sorry, but this statement of yours:

Sigs wrote:As for Apollo? Anything they get would have to be split between Manticore, Grayson, Andermani and Trevor's Star not enough to tip the balance.

is simply flat-out wrong, as it directly contradicts the explicit word of the author. If the attack had come later, Manticore would have been protected by shoals of system-defense apollo pods, no ifs, ands, or buts. And in that case, the attackers get annihilated without 3rd fleet or 8th fleet even having to lift a finger.

Also, keep in mind, it's not that they didn't think he could get *any* attack there that quickly, it's that they didn't think he could get an attack *capable of overcoming the system defenses* there that quickly. Remember, they didn't know about the donkey, and they didn't know that the havenite forces had already been redeployed.

Weber, in that pearl, notes that the attacking force was "better than 80% of his total modern wall", which fits reasonably well with the numbers Theisman gave in the initial discussion of Beatrice after accounting for the losses at Lovat - in other words, based on those numbers Theisman had already pre-deployed pretty much everything short of home fleet and those few nodal defense forces. And also based on those numbers, the havenite home fleet itself was nowhere near 350 SD(P) (with those numbers there's only ~150 operational SD(P) in the *entire rest of the navy!*) - and you can bet that the manties do their best to keep tabs on the strength of haven's home fleet just as much as haven tries to keep tabs on the strength of the manty home fleet, so if haven can accurately know that the manty home fleet consists of roughly 50 SD and 50 SP(P), the manties quite likely know the *rough* strength of haven's home fleet as well.

In other words, the manties would have *known* that the forces already concentrated at haven itself, which were the only ones they would have thought capable of being instantly dispatched against the home system, were insufficient for the task. Especially since they also would have, for perfectly good reasons, been overestimating the number of SD(P) haven would need to break through their home defenses. And the only *other* way that haven could have launched an attack capable of overwhelming the defenses *quickly* enough to get in before the apollo pods were ready would have been for haven to do exactly what it did - pre-*deploy* (not just pre-plan an attack) an absolutely enormous percentage of its entire wall in advanced positions expressly to be able to nearly instantly carry out such an attack. I don't think it's unreasonable of them to have not anticipated that - they're not stupid, but they're not clairvoyant either.

So, In WoH the attack on Manticore occurs close to the end of Feb. 8th fleet gets notified in early March and recalled from Haven, and almost immediately pulls out. She arrives in Manticore in March. "better than two weeks after the actual attack", though apparently the junction effectively halves the distance. So it is clearly not a 2.5 month trip from Haven to Manticore. It's barely a month.

kzt wrote:So, In WoH the attack on Manticore occurs close to the end of Feb. 8th fleet gets notified in early March and recalled from Haven, and almost immediately pulls out. She arrives in Manticore in March. "better than two weeks after the actual attack", though apparently the junction effectively halves the distance. So it is clearly not a 2.5 month trip from Haven to Manticore. It's barely a month.

That is only relevant if the attack force is already gathered and ready to go, which as has already been established Manticore didn't think would be the case.

zyffyr wrote:

kzt wrote:So, In WoH the attack on Manticore occurs close to the end of Feb. 8th fleet gets notified in early March and recalled from Haven, and almost immediately pulls out. She arrives in Manticore in March. "better than two weeks after the actual attack", though apparently the junction effectively halves the distance. So it is clearly not a 2.5 month trip from Haven to Manticore. It's barely a month.

That is only relevant if the attack force is already gathered and ready to go, which as has already been established Manticore didn't think would be the case.

You use capital fleet. Which is already gathered and ready to go.

And no, the scale of Manticores home fleet is much easier to determine that Haven's capital fleet. Home fleet was parked in orbit around a planet with a lot of commercial traffic, most of which was not Manticoran. Due the the junction lots of people and ships pass through the system. Haven was noted as mostly trading internally, and there is no excuse for anyone to be 'just passing through' as it is a long way from anywhere outside the RH systems.

It's close to the difference between trying to observe ships in the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor or in ships in Russia's Northern Fleet in Severomorsk. One is just outside one of the biggest tourist sites in the world, and the other is is a small city in the arctic that you need special government permits to visit.

MuonNeutrino wrote:The alliance had what they quite reasonably believed to be a comfortable margin before any attack could have possibly reached them in response to Lovat. Not just before an attack could have plausibly reached them, not just before Haven could plausibly have planned an attack, but before it should have been *physically possible*, given the travel times involved, for an attack to get there. They had every reason to believe that their existing defenses would be more than adequate against any attack Haven could have launched *immediately*, and by the time Haven *should* have been able to launch an attack capable of overcoming those existing defenses, the Apollo system defense pods would be ready.

Also I'm trying to remember if the Alliance had yet overcome the vast intelligence failures of Janiseck and figured out that Had drastically under reported their SD(P) strength when they publicly announced that they had them.

I'd have to go back and check, but Manticore might have been analysing contingency planes on the basis of seriously incorrect estimates of their enemy's strength. If you assume they have less SD(P)s then you'd overestimate the effectiveness of your home system's defenses. (Which would cause you to assume that Haven would be more cautious about attacking them)


Theisman had (again IIRC) way more SD(P)s that Manticore thought. He also took the initiative to strip them away from almost every system Manticore might raid in order to concentrate them all near the frontier. While a few of the SD(P) were concentrated in trap forces, like the one Honor blew away with Apollo, most of them were put where they'd have no chance to protect Havenite systems from attack. Purely so they'd be concentrated and ready on the (then unlikely seeming) offchance he could get permission to radically change the way they fought the war and go for an all or nothing attack on the Manticoran home system.


Yeah, that's a fairly unlikely seeming scenario. That Theisman would have contingency plans, even very well detailed ones, for an attack on Manticore is perfectly believable. That he'd reduce defenses on almost all Haven's system in order to pre-deploy his forces for one - before there was an apparent need and for before he had permission to launch one, is much more surprising.

Because Manticore didn't know or believe Theisman could have pre-deployed his assets in anticipation of such an enormous operation, they probably viewed as more likely the possibility of a desperation strike hitting Trevor's Star.

This would have bought Haven a little time and created a problem for Manticore if it lost Third Fleet and Trevor's Star, with Eighth "safely" in the Manticore system.

Even worse if Haven's hypothetical strike at Trevor's Star was prepared and capable of dealing with the Eighth Fleet they'd encountered at Lovat - which then consisted of 16 or 18 Apollo-capable SD(P)s. So when the extra 20 Apollo-capable wallers from the Andermani finally got ready and reported for duty, they did send them where they expected an attack, if one was coming.

In the absence of any firm information to the contrary, they just guessed wrong. And I find it hard to fault them too much for that - we as readers are privy to far more accurate and essential information than either side's intelligence services were.

kzt wrote:

zyffyr wrote:That is only relevant if the attack force is already gathered and ready to go, which as has already been established Manticore didn't think would be the case.

You use capital fleet. Which is already gathered and ready to go.

And which also consists of nowhere near enough SD(P) to do the job. Remember, the 350 SD(P) involved made up about 75% of haven's currently active modern wall. I submit that, regardless of anything else, it is completely unreasonable to imagine haven packing 75% of their wall into capital fleet.

And no, the scale of Manticores home fleet is much easier to determine that Haven's capital fleet.

...It's close to the difference between trying to observe ships in the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor or in ships in Russia's Northern Fleet in Severomorsk. One is just outside one of the biggest tourist sites in the world, and the other is is a small city in the arctic that you need special government permits to visit.

And yet, carrying your analogy further, even given the remoteness of Severomorsk it is still entirely possible to imagine gaining information on ships in port there, whether through technological reconnaissance or humint. Would it be as easy as at Pearl? Of course not. Would it be impossible, especially if a nation were, oh, I don't know, *at war* with Russia and thought that keeping an eye on this concentration of ships was in their vital national interest? Also of course not.

Manticore was *at war* with haven, and one of the things you *do* in a war is to try to keep tabs on what the other guy is doing to the best of your ability. Do you think they'd just throw up their hands and say 'oh well, no excuse for neutral shipping in haven, guess we'd better just give up finding out anything about their home fleet'? Of course not! Weber may not explicitly cover every single thing everyone on both sides of the war does (though it sometimes seems like he's trying to!), but one can usually assume that his characters are doing things that make sense, including scouting, and we have ample mentions in text of the intelligence-gathering efforts of both sides. Given that a home fleet is almost always one of the single largest and most important concentrations of force on the other side *and* that by definition you know exactly where to find it, it is ridiculous to imagine that either side would *not* be doing their best to keep an eye on it, simply as part of trying to keep track of your enemy's overall deployments if nothing else.

Manticore's efforts in that regard were most likely less productive than haven's due to the obvious difference in accessibility, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't know *anything*. And they don't need to be able to give the sort of detailed breakdown the havenites had on the manty home fleet to know that it *didn't* include the 400ish SD(P) that they likely considered necessary to successfully attack the manticore system. (Again, noting that they didn't know about the donkey and therefore would have been overestimating the force levels haven would need. As the battle shows, 250 SD(P) wouldn't have been enough even *with* the donkey, without it you would likely have had to bundle Chin's 5th fleet in right along Tourville's 2nd and then *still* brought another fleet to deal with 3rd.)

MuonNeutrino wrote: ZSnipping out all the wonderful stuff from both of yournposts i will only add

AND attacking Manticore's homeworld was still a suicide mission. Even Theisman and Pritchard admitted that. That said they spent lots of effort to"prove"that the New republic under Pritchard was NOT The Peoples' Republic under St. Just.

St. Just was more than willing to send fleets out on suicide missions. Theisman, not so much.

WeirdlyWired wrote:

MuonNeutrino wrote: ZSnipping out all the wonderful stuff from both of yournposts i will only add

AND attacking Manticore's homeworld was still a suicide mission. Even Theisman and Pritchard admitted that. That said they spent lots of effort to"prove"that the New republic under Pritchard was NOT The Peoples' Republic under St. Just.

St. Just was more than willing to send fleets out on suicide missions. Theisman, not so much.

They didn't think it was a suicide mission, they thought a lot of people would be hurt but they still had a good chance to win which was why they send them... if they thought it was a suicide mission they would have surrendered and saved several million lives.