SLN Reserve

JohnRoth wrote:We've already got an example of a successful attack on a heavily defended system: Oyster Bay.

It depended on heavily stealthed scouts to find where everything was, and then carefully targeted missiles. That's basically all it took.

We've also got an example of a very creative use of missile wedges to take out targets that don't have any kind of wedge or shield of their own up. Like SDs in parking orbits or mines.

Observe, calculate, place assets, push the big red button and run away laughing.

But what would that achieve? As I said above, a single digit % of Battle fleet can crubstomp any force and defense outside the GA and MA. Yes, you could engineer the destruction if a reserve location or 2, at the cost of your empire recieving an SLN enema.

So again, what would it achieve? It is a gamble no one not already at war with the SLN would take. And once any war starts, you can bet the old laxidasical defenses will be doubled or worse, making the attempt that much harder.

As a retired senior military bureaucrat, my preference would be to leave the reserve alone.
Any big organisation tends to be fixated on using their existing assets. It's the safe way to operate, from a bean counter viewpoint. Much of the British Royal Navy was unhappy about HMS Warrior as it made their fleet redundant.
After WW2 both the UK and the US continued making pushrod engined cars because they still had the jigs for them.
Germany looked across the wasteland and within a decade BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche were making advanced OHC cars with alloy cylinder heads, as were Japan with Toyotas, Nissans (Datsuns), and Hondas. Hell, Mazda recommenced production in Hiroshima.

Sigs wrote: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.

Actually the SLN would probably take lower losses than Haven did historically because that vast numerical advantage would let them do the one thing Haven never had the military edge to do in the entire first war -- launch an overwhelming strike directly at Manticore.

If the League launched something like Raging Justice at Manticore in 1904 PD they'd take heavy losses - but they'd smash through Home Fleet and the defensive forts and force the surrender of Manticore. At that point, with that phase of the war being over, they should be able to use the Junction to resupply and shuffle units back for repair through Beowulf. It would take a while but they could build up a Raging Justice II and launch another overwhelming strike straight at Haven - knocking them out as well.

The two individual battles would probably have much higher losses on all sides than any given battle in the entire 1st war with Haven -- but by avoiding 10 years of grinding attritional warfare the total losses would be far less.

And a single overwhelming assault on the enemy's home system was, and is, the SLN's preferred strategic tactic.
Concentrate their power in a single thrust to end the conflict.

Sigs wrote:And before the start of the first war with Haven no one knew or believed that deep strikes are possible.

I think that's a significant overstatement. Everybody knew that, if you had sufficient forces, the best way to end a war was a single overwhelming deep strike on the enemy's home system. (Which was the League's war plan - as they should have always had a large enough force advantage to just do that_

What they didn't feel was militarily useful was deep strikes with wallers on secondary enemy systems. That was supposed to be the job of BCs. Wallers would grind forward system by system whittling down the enemy's wall, and allowing logistical and repair units and facilities to be established in the recently captured system in order to best supply the ongoing attritional work. But always with the aim of reaching the military balance point where you could successfully lunge forward and capture the enemy's capital planet and compel their surrender.


Diverting wallers for the long transits needed for deep raids appeared to be a waste of military resources until the balance tipped far enough in one side's favor that they could free up sufficient firepower to knock out truly important secondary targets (like shipyards). Because in that largely pre-pod era a deep raid was unlikely to let you whittle down the enemy's SD force any better than another strike on the nearest occupied system (because in either case the enemy could successfully withdraw if the tide of battle began turning against them) - but take much longer making your attrition rate over time was lower than the grinding advance. Actually things might be worse because to kill vital system infrastructure in important rear area systems you had to take your attacking force up against their 'fixed' defenses as well as their mobile units -- so you might be losing SDs to forts that are no offensive threat to you.

By the 2nd war the growing power of system defenses meant that BCs were no longer able to make the kind of deep raids envisioned -- so you had to either abandon those deep strikes or start using SDs to perform them. But with SD(P)s you could inflict attritional losses on defenders in a way you couldn't in pre-pod days. But mostly 8th fleet was making operationally ineffective raids in order to achieve a strategic goal of enemy dispersal. Causing systems to apply political pressure to provide each with some significant military force so Haven's numerical advantage would be, as much as possible, wasted picketing dozens and dozens of systems, instead of concentrated to smash through Manticore and Grayson's remaining fleets.

The Peeps could have done a direct attack. They should have, but the risk was considered too high.

Jonathan_S wrote:If the League launched something like Raging Justice at Manticore in 1904 PD they'd take heavy losses - but they'd smash through Home Fleet and the defensive forts and force the surrender of Manticore. At that point, with that phase of the war being over, they should be able to use the Junction to resupply and shuffle units back for repair through Beowulf. It would take a while but they could build up a Raging Justice II and launch another overwhelming strike straight at Haven - knocking them out as well.

I will disagree that it would have been a forgone conclusion that the SLN would have won that theoretical battle. Even if the main war fighting tech they had in full deployment was towed pods with single drive missiles. In 1905 both the SLN planners and the RMN planners would have assumed the SLN would win, with the RMN thinking the SLN would take heavier losses than the SLN planners.

I believe the outcome would be closer to even chances the RMN or the SLN win, mainly depending on the effectiveness of the RMNs alpha strike with pods, and the more effective pen aids and ECM of RMN missiles would increase the chances of hits and random catastrophic damage to SLN ships prior to the Energy dual that would consume most of both fleets, leaving a badly mauled fleet in possession of the system.

A lot of random chance to depend on for a RMN victory.

Castenea wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:If the League launched something like Raging Justice at Manticore in 1904 PD they'd take heavy losses - but they'd smash through Home Fleet and the defensive forts and force the surrender of Manticore. At that point, with that phase of the war being over, they should be able to use the Junction to resupply and shuffle units back for repair through Beowulf. It would take a while but they could build up a Raging Justice II and launch another overwhelming strike straight at Haven - knocking them out as well.

I will disagree that it would have been a forgone conclusion that the SLN would have won that theoretical battle. Even if the main war fighting tech they had in full deployment was towed pods with single drive missiles. In 1905 both the SLN planners and the RMN planners would have assumed the SLN would win, with the RMN thinking the SLN would take heavier losses than the SLN planners.

I believe the outcome would be closer to even chances the RMN or the SLN win, mainly depending on the effectiveness of the RMNs alpha strike with pods, and the more effective pen aids and ECM of RMN missiles would increase the chances of hits and random catastrophic damage to SLN ships prior to the Energy dual that would consume most of both fleets, leaving a badly mauled fleet in possession of the system.

A lot of random chance to depend on for a RMN victory.

The big option there is, in this fictional, fictional scenario, is whether the RMN is actively prepping for the Havenite war, or is at relative peace? If it is prepping for, or fighting, the Havenite war, it's deployments will leave only 50-100 Wallers in Manticore space, many under repair or maintenance, with the rest (200-250) spread out at the Manticorian Alliance's many defensive commitments or attacking the PRN. If the War is not on, >200 wallers should be Manticore space, with a smaller % under repair and maintenance.

In the first case, a Raging Justice sized force will take Manticore's planets handily, though with far heavier loses than expected. In the 2nd case, combined with Manticore's tougher SDs, better applied warfighting technologies, experience, the local defenses, and the surprise of pods, your assessment would be correct - a pyrrhic battle probably with a slim SLN victory, but not necessarily.

The Junction, however, with 120+ forts massing an average of 16 Mtons with the average fort containing the combat power of ~4DN sized Scientists, probably could take a Raging Justice sized force on it's own in 1904. When you throw in the shoals of mines, IEWPs (Independent Energy Weapons Platforms) and pods, in addition to any assigned mobile warships and any warships defending other termini, The Junction Defenses could probably fight off Raging Justice II's 600-700 DNs, though at a cost of near total destruction.

Theemile wrote:
The Junction, however, with 120+ forts massing an average of 16 Mtons with the average fort containing the combat power of ~4DN sized Scientists, probably could take a Raging Justice sized force on it's own in 1904. When you throw in the shoals of mines, IEWPs (Independent Energy Weapons Platforms) and pods, in addition to any assigned mobile warships and any warships defending other termini, The Junction Defenses could probably fight off Raging Justice II's 600-700 DNs, though at a cost of near total destruction.

I'd certainly tend to agree with that; assuming the Raging Justice sized force did the smart thing and arrived through hyper. If they were stupid enough to feed 700 DNs piecemeal down the wormhole from Beowulf the laserhead equipped Junction defenses should win handily.

I was assuming that such an attack by the League would bypass the Junction in order to seize the orbitals of Manticore. Once Manticore has surrendered the Junction defenses can be ordered to stand down.

Weird Harold wrote:I have no idea what the numbers are, but there is textev that there are indeed "phantom reservists." The active fleet is over-manned with real people because they need to make periodic "show the flag" tours to around 2,000 member systems-- they have to be visible and verifiable to keep the budget credits flowing. The Reserve isn't visible or expected to be visible, so "phantom reservists" are possible.

ETA: Not all reservists on the payroll are phantoms. There are probably enough cadre around to make a showing for junketing politicians, but a large percentage of the reserve for will exist only on paper.

I have no doubt that if there is a reserve force that there is corruption, what I doubt is that the corruption extends to having tens of millions of non existent reservists which ultimately represents a large % of the total SLN manpower.