SLN Reserve

Theemile wrote:...
2)A "ready reserve" fleet - this group would be kept at a readiness level with full provisions and small caretaker crews onboard and rotating maintenance crews would keep the ships ready at low operating levels, with modern ammunition and provisions either in place or ready to load and be ready to reactivate that portion at a short notice. Spare crews from the reserve Weekend warriors would fill out the crews when needed.

...The SLN reserve appears to be comprised mostly of #3 and 4, with perhaps a very small group of #2

IIRC, textev suggests that due to the opportunity for corruption, the SLN has a much larger proportion of #2 -- at least on paper. You are probably accurate as to the reality of the SLN Reserve.

Sigs wrote:Do you think there is a limit to how much of your fleet can be in reserve? Having 20% of your fleet in Active service and 80% in reserve to me is lopsided. For example, the US army has ~50% in regular service and ~50% split between the National Guard and the Army Reserve.

Part of the question I did not make clear was what split would you have? In my view, I would have a split where the reserve is equal to or less than the regular units. With a good intelligence apparatus and competent leadership you can increase both the regular and part time units should threats emerge but there is a limit to the usefulness of a reserve when you have 8,000 SD's with limited ship yard space.

If the reserve is smaller than the active units, it´s not really much of a reserve, it´s also not such a big savings on expenses that it´s truly worthwhile.

A smaller reserve is what you keep as an "on call" unit, but as a "backup i case of major war emergency" thing, you need something more serious.

Having 1-10% as active units is common in real world militaries that maintain largescale reserves.

Seeing as the SLN "reserve" seems to be clustered in a handful of locations it leads me to believe that it is just a mothballed fleet. So even if they had the money and the ships were technologically in the same league as the enemy they would still face the fact that they cannot man but a fraction of those ships.


Since the ships are clustered in a half a dozen to a dozen systems, I doubt that they have a reserve force ready to man those ships. And if they do have a reserve force ready to man those ships, the league seriously screwed up because a) the reserve crew's would be spread through out the league and not have access to the hardware they would need to operate, or b) all of the reserve manpower would be clustered in relatively few systems. This is essentially like giving those systems parity at least numerically with the SLN in general.


If the SLN has reserve crew's and they are spread out amongst the League member systems then the GA's options just opened up quite a bit, if on the other hand they are clustered in relatively few systems it might bite them in the rear.

If the Reserve Fleet is concentrated and effectively mothballed in a few locations it would take a massive effort just to move enough reserve personel from their current systems of residence to where the ships are.
Just Lacoon I puts a major constriction on moving those people as the SL now lacks the majority of shipping just for it's normal transport needs let alone moving hundreds of thousands of Reservists to where the ships are.

It is possible that there are a number- even a significant number- of Reserve Ships being based in League Systems and being maintained on a regular basis with rotating crews of Reservists plus training cadres and Regular Navy Command and NCO staff but that is unlikely.

Something you and others seem to be overlooking is time scale.

The SLN operates on a 100-year plan: it is assumed that major changes, either political or technical, to the naval environment will be anticipated a hundred years out, and appropriate responses gotten under way. That's not as unreasonable as it seems in the Honorverse: had they been paying attention the Sollies could have seen the current situation starting to develop some 50-70 years ago. The officers who established that doctrine would certainly be appalled by the way that their successors were caught flat footed by the emergence of not one but two navies not just able but willing to go toe-to-toe with the SLN. Of course, they would probably also have avoided being manipulated into a shooting war with either of them in the first place.

So while it's true that they probably didn't envisage accumulating quite such a large reserve fleet, and would have expected the bulk of it to be rather more usable, planning on having 20-30 years to activate any significant part of it wasn't really a mistake. At the time.

Sigs wrote:My point is that the reserve is useless once it surpasses a certain point unless the entire navy is geared to a potential mass mobilization and includes a logistic element within it. Mobilizing 4 times your active capital ships even if we made the assumption that they were all up to date would swamp your logistics if they are geared to support your active ships plus say 20%. It would be like the US navy having 40 Aircraft carriers in reserve on top of their 10 active carriers, they may have the crews for them and the aircraft for them but if they don't have the ability to support all 50 carriers at once or even 20 carriers at once the reserve loses its value.

Maintaining a reserve that is small enough to be kept modern, and having an organic logistics assets with it goes farther than having a reserve so large that it has 600 years worth of ships and little to no logistics capabilities of it's own.

Brigade XO wrote:If the Reserve Fleet is concentrated and effectively mothballed in a few locations it would take a massive effort just to move enough reserve personel from their current systems of residence to where the ships are.
Just Lacoon I puts a major constriction on moving those people as the SL now lacks the majority of shipping just for it's normal transport needs let alone moving hundreds of thousands of Reservists to where the ships are.

It is possible that there are a number- even a significant number- of Reserve Ships being based in League Systems and being maintained on a regular basis with rotating crews of Reservists plus training cadres and Regular Navy Command and NCO staff but that is unlikely.

All of the textev is that the SLN Reserve is concentrated at a few nodal depots, such as Mars. Surprised there wasn't a reserve fleet at Beowulf, given the age and wealth of the colony there.

Louis R wrote:Something you and others seem to be overlooking is time scale.

The SLN operates on a 100-year plan: it is assumed that major changes, either political or technical, to the naval environment will be anticipated a hundred years out, and appropriate responses gotten under way. That's not as unreasonable as it seems in the Honorverse: had they been paying attention the Sollies could have seen the current situation starting to develop some 50-70 years ago. The officers who established that doctrine would certainly be appalled by the way that their successors were caught flat footed by the emergence of not one but two navies not just able but willing to go toe-to-toe with the SLN. Of course, they would probably also have avoided being manipulated into a shooting war with either of them in the first place.

So while it's true that they probably didn't envisage accumulating quite such a large reserve fleet, and would have expected the bulk of it to be rather more usable, planning on having 20-30 years to activate any significant part of it wasn't really a mistake. At the time.

The original plans of the reserve would have worked had the Multi-drive missile, effective missile pods, and pod layer ships not been deployed in the last ten years.

pnakasone wrote:The original plans of the reserve would have worked had the Multi-drive missile, effective missile pods, and pod layer ships not been deployed in the last ten years.

And it must be pointed out that those innovations were the first really significant shift in the combat paradigm in centuries (yes, I know, technically laser heads constitute one too, but I would argue that their impact on tactics and shipbuilding considerations was relatively minor. A pre-laser head SD can be adapted to use in the post-laser head environment by simply increasing and modernizing its point defence and EW capabilities; there is no equivalent change one can make to make a pre-pod/MDM ship a viable platform in a pod/MDM environment).

The E wrote:

pnakasone wrote:The original plans of the reserve would have worked had the Multi-drive missile, effective missile pods, and pod layer ships not been deployed in the last ten years.

And it must be pointed out that those innovations were the first really significant shift in the combat paradigm in centuries (yes, I know, technically laser heads constitute one too, but I would argue that their impact on tactics and shipbuilding considerations was relatively minor. A pre-laser head SD can be adapted to use in the post-laser head environment by simply increasing and modernizing its point defence and EW capabilities; there is no equivalent change one can make to make a pre-pod/MDM ship a viable platform in a pod/MDM environment).

Not really. While an old ship can just load laser heads and change software, a new ship optimized for laser head combst, is going to be much superior. It will have a minimized, all grazer energy battery, freeing up space for other weapons. The optimized ship will have more point defense, and more CMs, in a ratio favoring CMs, to interdict more missiles, further from the ship, and no slug thrower countermeasures.

Of course, the new design will have more, faster firing, missile launchers, and deeper magazines so it can throw more missiles longer. It will have more redundancies, especially in sidewalls and firecontrol, so it can absorb as many hits as possible, without losing capability. Finally, the armor is complerely different on the 2 designs, with the newer design built with the ability to deal with the frequencies of laserheads, as well as lasers and grasers.


I'm not saying it's a monumental groundswell like MDM's were, but in a all up battle between a 1904 Scientist and a 1904 Bellerophone, the Bellerophone wins `90% of the time.

Theemile wrote:Not really. While an old ship can just load laser heads and change software, a new ship optimized for laser head combst, is going to be much superior. It will have a minimized, all grazer energy battery, freeing up space for other weapons. The optimized ship will have more point defense, and more CMs, in a ratio favoring CMs, to interdict more missiles, further from the ship, and no slug thrower countermeasures.

That goes without saying. I think we can agree that, while a ship designed from the ground up for laser head combat will definitely be superior to a ship refitted for the new environment, this doesn't mean that the refitted ship will be completely obsolete.