SLN Reserve

noblehunter wrote:Like Manticore, the Solarian League only needs to survive long enough for its inherent advantages to carry the day. Unlike Manticore, the League doesn't have and won't get the time they need. Half the point of the last book was to drive home just how quickly the League was coming apart at the edges.

Yeah, the reports of unrest in PagoPago are certainly going to get the attention of the readers of the NY TIMES. They will all be shaking in their boots.

kzt wrote:Yeah, the reports of unrest in PagoPago are certainly going to get the attention of the readers of the NY TIMES. They will all be shaking in their boots.

The readers of the NYTimes may not be interested, but the Naval Intelligence Analysts at Pearl Harbor and their Flag Officer bosses certainly would be interested enough to investigate to determine the source of that unrest (Imperial Japan perhaps?)

At least that's what I think, I used to be in the Intel game in my past, misspent life.

kzt wrote:

noblehunter wrote:Like Manticore, the Solarian League only needs to survive long enough for its inherent advantages to carry the day. Unlike Manticore, the League doesn't have and won't get the time they need. Half the point of the last book was to drive home just how quickly the League was coming apart at the edges.

Yeah, the reports of unrest in PagoPago are certainly going to get the attention of the readers of the NY TIMES. They will all be shaking in their boots.

They might be a bit more worried about New Jersey's vote to seceded. Especially when their ability to hold onto distant territories is called into question.

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.

I am not overlooking the time scale, their 100 year rule and the reserve are contradictory policies. If you are following the hundred year policy, you don't need or should not even want the reserve. If you need/want the reserve then you should not be following a 100 year rule.


The reserve is a drain on resources without any practical benefits for the League or the SLN. In fact it is so useless that is not even good for prestige or fear.

Everyone who has two brain cells to rub together should know that the SLN cannot mobilize more than a few hundred of the SD's in an emergency and even then it would take a significant amount of time as to make them useless. Even though those ships are in reserve, they require a whole host of support infrastructure and personnel to maintain them... resources that could be spend on say another 500-600 SDs in the regular BF. So even the SLN should have been able to as an institution to see that the reserve is useless.


If they are using a 100 year policy then the reserve is useless because realistically they would invest in research, shipbuilding and training, otherwise their whole plan consists of training crews for the reserve ships which does not require require100 years. In fact the reserve might be detrimental to the hundred year plan just like it is proving, it gives the SLN a false sense of security, they will see that there are 8000+ SDs and DNs in the reserve and not invest in more ship yards, the politicians see the 8,000 SDs and DNs as a viable force thus when budget time rolls around they can point at the SLN and say see you have 10,000 SDs why do you need more? The fact that they can man maybe 30% of that number within a 2 year timeframe seems irrelevant.

pnakasone wrote:

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.

Not likely, even if the technological difference was erased, those reserve ships have no crews. The SLN can scrape together enough crews for a few hundred SD's but ultimately, the remainder of the reserve is useless. They likely don't have the yard space to reactivate a significant % of the reserve even if they had the manpower and most likely they wont have the logistics to support whatever they can mobilize.

If we are talking about a hundred year cycle, that just happens to be how long since Jutland.
If a similar national survival situation arose now, one nuclear tipped cruise missile from one modern ship could destroy both fleets as fighting forces even if not completely sink them all in one strike.

Sigs wrote:
Not likely, even if the technological difference was erased, those reserve ships have no crews. The SLN can scrape together enough crews for a few hundred SD's but ultimately, the remainder of the reserve is useless. They likely don't have the yard space to reactivate a significant % of the reserve even if they had the manpower and most likely they wont have the logistics to support whatever they can mobilize.

Given 10 years, the SLN could have doubled the size of the active fleet, and readied another few hundred for quick activation, with cadre crew already assigned, and be readying more for fleet replacements as other ships are killed.

But, that requires time to increase budgets and staffing levels. Time, the SLN would have had if they were paying attention. In 1905, Haven had ~900 wallers and BBs, The RMN had ~300 wallers, and the IAN probably had ~200. When you throw in fortification and other fixed defenses, the active SLN couldn't take on 2 empires if they got together. (the RMN had ~150 forts at the planets and junction, each with ~3 SDs of combat power on average, plus minefields and independant weapons plarforms. Assuming tech parity and given that a Scientist is essentially a DN, with 3/4ths of an SDs combat power, Just the forts and wallers of the RMN could have accounted for 1/2 the active SLN wall.)

Someone should have noticed this and started expanding the active wall before 1900, so they could continue to be able to crush anyone with the weight of their numbers. But no one did, now they are faced with the need for a crash mobilization, which they are unprepared for.

Theemile wrote:Someone should have noticed this and started expanding the active wall before 1900, so they could continue to be able to crush anyone with the weight of their numbers. But no one did, now they are faced with the need for a crash mobilization, which they are unprepared for.

Why bother paying attention to what everyone else is doing. When to do so would be a waste of time and money because it is absolutely written in stone fact that the SLN is and always will be the greatest most powerful and technically advanced fleet in human space.

Sigs 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.

Not likely, even if the technological difference was erased, those reserve ships have no crews. The SLN can scrape together enough crews for a few hundred SD's but ultimately, the remainder of the reserve is useless. They likely don't have the yard space to reactivate a significant % of the reserve even if they had the manpower and most likely they wont have the logistics to support whatever they can mobilize.

You're confusing "The Plan" with the corrupt reality.

The reserve as planned is viable. If the Reserve actually had the cadre crews and routine maintenance and upgrades the SLN has paid (is paying) for over the last couple of centuries, they'd be in reasonably good shape as far as a ready reserve.

The reality is that all of the payroll and maintenance budget has gone into the pockets of corrupt reserve admirals and administrators.

The other item you're overlooking -- and the real flaw in the SLN reserve -- is that the SLN froze its SD design with the Scientist-class with only a token improvement in the Vega-class rather than the constant, incremental improvement of the type. All of the R&D and incremental improvements has gone to the BCs and below for Frontier Fleet.

Making even incremental improvements would make the ships in the Reserve incompatible with the active fleet and they'd have to actually spend the budget for upgrades (like replacing auto-cannon with PDLCs) on upgrading the fleet instead of a new mistress.

I doubt that the Reserve was planned to ballon up to 8,000 ships, but scrapping the oldest when new construction is added would cut into the budget for mistresses and lavish entertainments the Reserve Admirals deserve. The size of the Reserve is the result of the corrupt reality instead of the rational, if overly conservative, plan for a functional reserve.

Sigs wrote:Not likely, even if the technological difference was erased, those reserve ships have no crews. The SLN can scrape together enough crews for a few hundred SD's but ultimately, the remainder of the reserve is useless. They likely don't have the yard space to reactivate a significant % of the reserve even if they had the manpower and most likely they wont have the logistics to support whatever they can mobilize.

It is useless. I believe the Reserve is only so large because it costs resources to actually disassemble and scrap old vessels.

It ties up a yard slip. It consumes millions of labour man-hours and all the supporting operational resources that entails. Even if recycling efficiency is high, scrapping Honorverse starships is an economically negative activity.

Whereas a long-term parking orbit is effectively free. The thing about space? There's a lot of it.