SLN Reserve

Sigs wrote:I think that the security of the reserve would have been set centuries before the events in the books and at some point the SLN had to be at least marginally competent and rational force. Plus there is also the advantage at least from my perspective of having x# of independent commands for senior officers.

The problem with that logic is that the GA isn't dealing with the "marginally competent and rational" SLN of the glory days of the league. What the GA has to deal with is the geriatric and senile heir to the SLN's reputation.

Every one refers to the SLN as "The 800 Kilo Gorilla" without realizing that 400 Kilos of that gorilla is fat and bloat.

There are indeed lots of independent commands for senior officers, but those commands are a lot cushier if you don't actually hire, train, and, most importantly, pay all of the enlisted crew that you're being paid to command. Whatever the Reserve was planned to be, it is the "golden parachute" for BF senior officers who don't believe it will ever be needed or attacked and all of the security arrangements made by the earlier, more rational SLN of the past now exist mostly on paper and the reality is that geriatric mall-cop with a Tazer I mentioned earlier.

After all, if you remove some critical component and lock it in a safe you only need to guard the safe to prevent theft, and "nobody would ever be insane enough to attack the reserve." (in order to plan for the most remote chance, it is necessary to recognize that there is a remote chance.)

Weird Harold wrote:
The problem with that logic is that the GA isn't dealing with the "marginally competent and rational" SLN of the glory days of the league. What the GA has to deal with is the geriatric and senile heir to the SLN's reputation.

The GA is not relevant to this discussion, neither is the MA. The way that the technological balance is set, the SLNs 2300 active ships are nothing but target practice for the GA and when all is said and done the GA is nothing but a speck in the history of the League. It is relevant only in the last few months to a year out of centuries of League and SLN history. When talking about the war with the GA the SLN and the reserve are useless so the question is set in 1900 or 1850 or 1800 etc... because I doubt that there have been monumental changes in the League over the previous 100 years.

Weird Harold wrote:Every one refers to the SLN as "The 800 Kilo Gorilla" without realizing that 400 Kilos of that gorilla is fat and bloat.

In 1905 the SLN was very much the 800 kilo gorilla because even with it's corruption and institutional incompetence they were far stronger than an alliance of Manticore and Haven even if it were possible in 1905. When they outnumber the opposition by 3 to 1 in SDs they can afford to lose a few battles and lose a few ships and still come out on top. Their reserve may very well be largely useless but they are so bloated and mismanaged that a few years of war might allow them to lean out a bit and find enough manpower to man a few hundred of the newest construction.

Weird Harold wrote:There are indeed lots of independent commands for senior officers, but those commands are a lot cushier if you don't actually hire, train, and, most importantly, pay all of the enlisted crew that you're being paid to command. Whatever the Reserve was planned to be, it is the "golden parachute" for BF senior officers who don't believe it will ever be needed or attacked and all of the security arrangements made by the earlier, more rational SLN of the past now exist mostly on paper and the reality is that geriatric mall-cop with a Tazer I mentioned earlier.

1)There is only so much corruption an organization can endure before it collapses in and of itself. So I highly doubt the reserve had/has anything like enough crews for more than a few dozen ships. 8,000 SDs at even 4,000 crew members each is still somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30,000,000 people in uniform. Collecting the pay for a squadron of 16,000 people when they don't exist is one thing, collecting the pay for 30 million people when they don't exist is another. When 20-50% of your military manpower doesn't actually exist someone is bound to notice and ask uncomfortable questions. The SLN has to number in the billions of people to be able to hide 30-40 million people that don't exist.


2)The SLN has to show activity, when you have 2300 SDs in active service and they rarely if ever leave the core they have to show that they are of use. Keep in mind that as corrupt as the SLN is, it is not the only League entity that is corrupt and that multiple other departments are fighting for more funding for their own pet project and more funding to skim off of.

3)If BF did not have any commitments and all they did was hang around a dozen systems with all 2,000 SDs in their fleet eventually someone will ask the important question... why do we spend so much money on you when FF brings in money while you waste it?

Weird Harold wrote:After all, if you remove some critical component and lock it in a safe you only need to guard the safe to prevent theft, and "nobody would ever be insane enough to attack the reserve." (in order to plan for the most remote chance, it is necessary to recognize that there is a remote chance.)

The SLN might as an institution not believe that anyone will ever threaten the League but when their funding is concern they have to justify their existence thus they will likely see threats everywhere whether they believe them in them or not.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
The problem with that logic is that the GA isn't dealing with the "marginally competent and rational" SLN of the glory days of the league. What the GA has to deal with is the geriatric and senile heir to the SLN's reputation.

The GA is not relevant to this discussion, neither is the MA.

Substitute the threat of your choice. By the start of the series, ca 1900PD, the Solarian League in general and the SLN in particular haven't seen any threat for so long, they don't believe that a threat could exist.

The glimpses we've seen of Battle Fleet's training and leadership in textev show a force that couldn't fight its way out of wet toilet tissue. They're fortunate that Frontier Fleet is the face of the SLN that non-league entities see; Frontier Fleet is actually reasonably competent and well-equipped.

Battle Fleet, OTOH, is just the face the politicians/bureaucrats see and hear. That face is saying "we need a couple of SDs this budget cycle to preserve the skills and tooling required to maintain our fleet" and "We need to fund 20-30 million enlisted personnel and maintenance for the Reserve Fleet to ensure our over-whelming superiority to any possible enemy." And anything else that will keep the funds flowing to Battle Fleet and the Reserve.

Frontier Fleet is under-funded as far as the League budget is concerned, because Battle Fleet is right there with bribes and blackmail to influence those who vote on the budget. Frontier Fleet can skim what they need off of the fees and "protection money" they generate for the League Treasury so the financial neglect isn't as bad as it might be in a less corrupt system.

Consider this: The "competent officers" you insist must exist have all been Frontier Fleet and no higher ranked than Commodore. (out at the front, that is.) The grossly incompetent -- Byng, Crandall, Rajampet, et al -- have all been high ranking Battle Fleet Admirals with several lesser admirals as staff. Who would be setting policy and/or making decicions? The high-ranking admirals with lesser, brown-nosing yes-men admirals advising them, or the commodore's and rear-admirals in Frontier Fleet?

Sigs wrote:Fort Knox and it's gold is but one example, what if we were talking about the Nuclear arsenal of the US? Would you say that the higher the concentration of weapons, the heavier the security? If the US disperses it's say 10,000 weapons as a means of protection from surprise attack wouldn't you say that each individual weapon or each individual cluster of 10-15 weapons has to be as heavily protected as possible within reason, but if you clustered 10% of the weapons in one location the security has to be significantly heavier then when it is only a single weapon or even 10 weapons?

They are totally asymmetrical issues.

The main thing that physical security measures gain you is time. Time is the enemy of a thief. The longer it takes the more likely it is that you will be detected and the more force the responding security organization will marshal while you are engaged in your theft.

In the Fort Knox example, by the time you get ready to drive out with your 500 trucks you are going to have not just the entire depository security force waiting, you'll also have the base MPs, 4 county's SWAT teams, an FBI swat team, and likely a mechanized battalion and an attack helo battalion with a USAF AWACS in the air and a fighter squadron on call.

However stealing one warhead is a really, really big deal. And firing one missile is an even bigger deal. And it doesn't require several days on-site and 500 plus people involved.

Sigs wrote:You have 8,000 SDs to protect and you have a force of 500 SDs and 1,000 escorts(BC and below) at your disposal for pickets.

Scenario 1) Those 8,000 SDs are spread out in 100 locations.

Scenario 2) Those 8,000 SDs are spread out in 50 locations.

Scenario 3) Those 8,000 SDs are spread out in 5 locations.


Would you defend each location with the same level of force regardless?

Obviously, i would defend them as forcefully as is needed to avoid either theft or "realistically" possible surprise attacks.

80 SD or 1600 SD doesn´t really matter, because losing 80 is still completely unacceptable. Losing more would just be greater numbers of unacceptable.

And i believe someone mentioned that it had been stated that the actual number of locations was 7 or something?

100 locations would in most cases be a very bad idea so why would you even ask about that?

Weird Harold wrote:
Substitute the threat of your choice. By the start of the series, ca 1900PD, the Solarian League in general and the SLN in particular haven't seen any threat for so long, they don't believe that a threat could exist.

They don’t have to believe that a threat exists, they just have to make a case that it does exist.
If there is no piracy, the SLN sees absolutely no threats on the horizon and they(BF) don’t venture to far from their bases and have few actual commitments how long would it be before someone makes a case to cut the SLN? After all cutting 600 SDs from the active fleet gives someone else the chance to put that money to more “efficient” use in their department and skimming off of it for themselves. Even in the League they have to still justify their budget to someone even if that someone is not elected.

Weird Harold wrote:The glimpses we've seen of Battle Fleet's training and leadership in textev show a force that couldn't fight its way out of wet toilet tissue. They're fortunate that Frontier Fleet is the face of the SLN that non-league entities see; Frontier Fleet is actually reasonably competent and well-equipped.

And in 1905 the technological gap was not too great while the numerical gap between any hypothetical Manticore/Haven alliance and the SLN was tremendous. The SLN is double the number of SDs as the alliance would have SDs, DNs and BBs. And the SLN would have 3.5 times as many light combatants as the alliance can field. That is a large enough advantage that they can absorb losses and still come out on top. After all Haven did it with a significantly smaller numerical advantage even though they were led by incompetent buffoons(commissioners). Keep in mind, without the technological advantage they enjoy in 1920, the alliance would not be able to keep Beowulf thus they would have to fight their way the long way around… exactly the way SLN doctrine envisioned.

Weird Harold wrote:Battle Fleet, OTOH, is just the face the politicians/bureaucrats see and hear. That face is saying "we need a couple of SDs this budget cycle to preserve the skills and tooling required to maintain our fleet" and "We need to fund 20-30 million enlisted personnel and maintenance for the Reserve Fleet to ensure our over-whelming superiority to any possible enemy." And anything else that will keep the funds flowing to Battle Fleet and the Reserve.

I highly doubt that there are 20-30 million reservists. The SLN with its bloat counting BF and FF numbers probably at about 140-150 million people. Adding 30 million reservists to that number should allow the SLN to field 5,000 more SDs. If someone was collecting pay and benefits for 30,000,000 people that don’t exists that would represent between 15% and 25% of the SLN depending on their actual number…how would anyone hide the fact that anywhere between 15 and 25% of the uniformed members of the SLN don’t actually exist? And if the reserves only exist on paper why are there 2300 SDs in active service? If someone can hide 30 million people who don’t actually exist why not take out another million or two from the active fleet? Why not take the money for a couple of hundred SDs? There are actualy 1,500 SDs in service but on paper there are 2,300 SDs… If you can hide 30,000,000 servicemen how hard would it be to hide another 4million?

Weird Harold wrote:Consider this: The "competent officers" you insist must exist have all been Frontier Fleet and no higher ranked than Commodore. (out at the front, that is.) The grossly incompetent -- Byng, Crandall, Rajampet, et al -- have all been high ranking Battle Fleet Admirals with several lesser admirals as staff. Who would be setting policy and/or making decicions? The high-ranking admirals with lesser, brown-nosing yes-men admirals advising them, or the commodore's and rear-admirals in Frontier Fleet?

I don’t think they were as incompetent as the technological imbalance made them out to be. They were arrogant, corrupt and inexperienced but in a technologically equal fight they would have hurt the other side bad. If the two sides were numerically equal the SLN would have been defeated but they would have trashed the RMN fleet as well. And ultimately, putting 70 SLN SDs out of commission is less damaging to the SLN than putting half that number of RMN SDs out of commission.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:Fort Knox and it's gold is but one example, what if we were talking about the Nuclear arsenal of the US? Would you say that the higher the concentration of weapons, the heavier the security? If the US disperses it's say 10,000 weapons as a means of protection from surprise attack wouldn't you say that each individual weapon or each individual cluster of 10-15 weapons has to be as heavily protected as possible within reason, but if you clustered 10% of the weapons in one location the security has to be significantly heavier then when it is only a single weapon or even 10 weapons?

They are totally asymmetrical issues.

The main thing that physical security measures gain you is time. Time is the enemy of a thief. The longer it takes the more likely it is that you will be detected and the more force the responding security organization will marshal while you are engaged in your theft.

In the Fort Knox example, by the time you get ready to drive out with your 500 trucks you are going to have not just the entire depository security force waiting, you'll also have the base MPs, 4 county's SWAT teams, an FBI swat team, and likely a mechanized battalion and an attack helo battalion with a USAF AWACS in the air and a fighter squadron on call.

However stealing one warhead is a really, really big deal. And firing one missile is an even bigger deal. And it doesn't require several days on-site and 500 plus people involved.

One missiles is a really big deal, but my point is that taking out/stealing/capturing 10% of your entire arsenal is a much bigger deal. When I say that the higher the concentration the higher the security that is meant to protect against a whole host of potential threats.

You would be defending against the threat of theft, destruction, or capture.


And one SD is also a pretty big deal, how many core worlds can hold off an SD long enough for the SLN to come and help? Even a poorly trained crew can take out the defences on most core systems.

Tenshinai wrote:
Obviously, i would defend them as forcefully as is needed to avoid either theft or "realistically" possible surprise attacks.

80 SD or 1600 SD doesn´t really matter, because losing 80 is still completely unacceptable. Losing more would just be greater numbers of unacceptable.

Well, losing 1% of your SDs would be more acceptable than losing 20% of your SDs. One is the SLN having a very bad month, the other is the SLN potentially facing disaster. Guarding 80 Reserve SDs with 5 SDs might be acceptable, but guarding 1600 reserve SDs with the same 5 SDs would be less so.

Tenshinai wrote:And i believe someone mentioned that it had been stated that the actual number of locations was 7 or something?

100 locations would in most cases be a very bad idea so why would you even ask about that?

Tenshinai wrote:
That is false logic. If the security is sufficient to keep 1% safe, then essentially the same force will still be sufficient for 50%.
Because you don´t want that 1% to be stolen in the first place, so you MUST have ENOUGH to prevent that as well.

You cannot say "oh it´s just 1% so we just make sure NEARLY all thieves can´t steal it".

Because my point was that what you use to defend 1% with is not necessarily good enough to defend 20%. In any situation whether it is the novels or real life, there are finite resources, money and manpower. And since there are 6 or 7 sites, the SLN has to provide adequate security because each of those sites represents 15% of the reserve. If the reserve was spread out in to 100 equal lumps you wont be able to provide the same level of security as when it is concentrated in 7 sites. So when you say that whether it is 1% or 20% they should be equally well protected...true if it was a perfect world. In reality it is not so because you would be finite resources and in the example I put out the resources on hand were 500 SDs. This means that protecting 1% of the reserve with 5 SDs might be acceptable but protecting 15% of the reserve with the same 5 SDs would not but at the same time with a higher concentration you don't have to put 75 SDs to guard the that reserve site either.

OK, this whole thing has gotten ridiculous.

We know there are only a handful of sites the reserve is in (6 or 7).

We know all these sites are in the Shell of the Solarian League.

We know all the sites are co-located with a major SLN Battlefleet Base.

We know the Reserve is mothballed - the air is pumped out, the provisions removed, the reactors are cold, batteries/superconductors are discharged, the fuel has been removed.

We know there is some decent level of security (see co-located with major SLN BattleFleet base.)

So, we've established that the bases are most likely not location vulnerable. We have established that there is a major fleet presence nearby. We have established that they are in large, tightly controlled groups. We have established that you can't just run up to a reserve ship, jump onto the bridge and hotwire the conn and fly off. If you were to try to tow off a ship, it would require a large tug or military ship of similar size, and a slow crawl back to the hyperlimit, all the time vulnerable to reacting ships which could greatly out accelerate you - even the BF SDs.

We really cannot be sure what the security level at any time is, (be is LACs or destroyers or BCs routinely patrolling) but we know there should be a decent MILITARY security force, since this is an active base. Also, we can assume there is a decent sensor setup (for the Solarian League), AND whatever normal patrol ships are used, they will be backed by more powerful units of the BattleFleet. Even if they can't intercept you short of the base, I doubt you are escaping without dodging a massive missile storm.

If you remove the GA and MA from the equation, the only real offensive option for a verge warlord is to fire a shload of ballistic missiles from outsystem and hope some don't get intercepted and blow holes in the reserve fleet. Then what? You just royally cheesed the SLN. They will hunt you down and roll over any defenses your planets have with a single digit percentage of their fleet. If you frame someone else, they will curbstomp them, then you in turn.

Sigs wrote:Well, losing 1% of your SDs would be more acceptable than losing 20% of your SDs.

No, it isn´t. That would be like saying that it´s worse to be shot dead by 20 bullets than with 1. You´re still dead. It´s still epic fail.

Same with capital ships, losing 1 is still complete failure, because the wrong people only needs ONE if they want to, for example, hold a planet hostage or depopulate it with massed kinetic strikes.

Sigs wrote:One is the SLN having a very bad month, the other is the SLN potentially facing disaster.

Both are disasters. Only the scale of how far it can go differs.
Unless it happened in some amazingly unrealistic or impossible to predict way, the local commander is still going to get shredded.

Seriously, a bad month? You just allowed SOMEONE to become one of the TOP TEN owners of military firepower and you call that a bad month?

Really, think about it. There´s only a handful of nations known to have more than maybe a dozen of SDs at all.

Sigs wrote:Guarding 80 Reserve SDs with 5 SDs might be acceptable, but guarding 1600 reserve SDs with the same 5 SDs would be less so.

Wrong. If your other deployments are good enough, that´s fine either way.

Sigs wrote:And since there are 6 or 7 sites, the SLN has to provide adequate security because each of those sites represents 15% of the reserve.

My guess would be local defense only forces/system defense missiles and 2-4 squadrons of capital ships on a rotating schedule.

How many entities in the Honorverse do you know that are realistically capable of a deep strike against heavy system defenses(they have to defend the naval bases as well, so they´re going to have it all close enough together to defend jointly) supported by 16-32 capital ships?

WE KNOW there are some that ARE capable of it, even if the extreme range would strain the ability of even the RMN to do it.
SLN does not know that, they don´t know that what "everyone knows" about interstellar deep warfare and how it´s mostly impossible has already been invalidated by RMN, GSN, MAN and Haven.

Yet, if SLN tech was more up to date, even "now" it would be a very troublesome mission to strike against the reserves.
And even as it is, it would still not be easy, even if it was more logistical issues than a matter of firepower.

The basic truth is that if the SLN defends each reserve location with 3 squadrons of SDs, that means they already have more mobile firepower supporting system defenses than maybe 20 nations in the known universe have in total.

How many mothballed ships are guarded are irrelevant when there´s barely anyone that can even think about contesting the area at all. And again, that´s before accounting for fixed defenses and a few squadrons of LACs and probably a few squadrons of cruisers and lighter ships that are attached to the base and system.


Again, you´re using false logic. If i defend a site to the point where as far as i know noone is realistically capable of attacking it, then exactly what the site contains that is being defended is completely irrelevant because to my knowledge, noone can successfully attack it anyway.