SLN Reserve

Castenea wrote:I suspect FitzGerald was exaggerating a little, note that time includes both offloading the currently loaded spares and reloading, thus loading the spares would take about 10 days. Where is the bottleneck that slows this down personnel, lock/passage capacity, or equipment for moving the spares? Personnel and equipment are easiest to remedy, but can affect getting other ships ready.

I believe that while ships can be reprovisioned much quicker, many take over a month in large part so that the crew can be rotated through shore leave. The main exception I can think of outside of a shooting war were submarines where they were reprovisioned in a week or less, and then manned by the alternate crew.

Actually I think FitzGerald was making it clear that if Commander Bennington did not play ball and let the supply issue drop it would take three weeks or more to unload and restock the Hexapuma.If that occurred Bennington would have to explain the delay in the Hexpumas departure to high command.

pnakasone wrote:

Castenea wrote:I suspect FitzGerald was exaggerating a little, note that time includes both offloading the currently loaded spares and reloading, thus loading the spares would take about 10 days. Where is the bottleneck that slows this down personnel, lock/passage capacity, or equipment for moving the spares? Personnel and equipment are easiest to remedy, but can affect getting other ships ready.

I believe that while ships can be reprovisioned much quicker, many take over a month in large part so that the crew can be rotated through shore leave. The main exception I can think of outside of a shooting war were submarines where they were reprovisioned in a week or less, and then manned by the alternate crew.

Actually I think FitzGerald was making it clear that if Commander Bennington did not play ball and let the supply issue drop it would take three weeks or more to unload and restock the Hexapuma.If that occurred Bennington would have to explain the delay in the Hexpumas departure to high command.

I think the most time consuming part of off-loading and on-loading of the spares in question was in this sentence:

I informed him that if he wishes to submit the required paperwork to have our original requests disallowed, all of our onboard spares off-loaded, new requests drawn up, considered, and approved, and the new spares loaded, that's certainly his privilege.

Paperwork in the Honorverse, as well as in real life, has to be done by people. And people can only do paperwork so fast (if it is to be done correctly and accurately), even when they are trying to expedite it.

Vince wrote:Paperwork in the Honorverse, as well as in real life, has to be done by people. And people can only do paperwork so fast (if it is to be done correctly and accurately), even when they are trying to expedite it.

Just imagine all the little ways someone can slow down the unloading and reloading of a ship by following the exact letter of the rules regarding the paperwork.

Then you have to add how motivated is the ships crew in hindering the process of unloading and reloading the ship because some dockside bean-counter got his shorts in twist over their lack of completely proper paper work regarding their supplies.

Also, keep in mind the pre-MHW strategic environment. Back then, the SLN's confidence in its own invincibility was probably true. Had the SLN decided, for whatever reason, to go and conquer Manticore and Haven before the war started, they would probably have won. True, it would have been bloody, but the Sollies were selling tech to Haven (the "Regret This In 17 Years" plan) back then, so they obviously had a technical edge, although both Manticore and Haven would have had better personnel.

What changed was the rapid tech development on both sides as a result of the war. AFAIK, this was the first time in centuries that two star nations with comparable walls of battle had gone to war. Eventually, we got the double whammy of MDMs and podnaughts, at which point every other navy in existence became obsolete.

Meshakhad wrote:True, it would have been bloody, but the Sollies were selling tech to Haven (the "Regret This In 17 Years" plan) back then, so they obviously had a technical edge, although both Manticore and Haven would have had better personnel.

Semi-true.

Haven was buying bootleg Sollie tech, but what they were buying wasn't SLN tech. What they were buying was often tech the SLN rejected even though it would have been an improvement; buying it would have meant retro-fitting the reserve or scrapping it.

IOW, what Haven was buying was better than what the SLN was buying; Solarian Tech but not SLN tech.

Weird Harold wrote:IOW, what Haven was buying was better than what the SLN was buying; Solarian Tech but not SLN tech.

And they weren't buying complete warships, complete warship designs, or even complete missile designs. They were buying designs of components and plugging them into systems designed by Havenites who had actual experience fighting real wars.

drothgery wrote:And they weren't buying complete warships, complete warship designs, or even complete missile designs. They were buying designs of components and plugging them into systems designed by Havenites who had actual experience fighting real wars.

They bought at least one complete missile design, complete with hardware.

pnakasone wrote:

Vince wrote:Paperwork in the Honorverse, as well as in real life, has to be done by people. And people can only do paperwork so fast (if it is to be done correctly and accurately), even when they are trying to expedite it.

Just imagine all the little ways someone can slow down the unloading and reloading of a ship by following the exact letter of the rules regarding the paperwork.

Then you have to add how motivated is the ships crew in hindering the process of unloading and reloading the ship because some dockside bean-counter got his shorts in twist over their lack of completely proper paper work regarding their supplies.

Just remember paperwork has to be done correctly or all hell will break loose. I read about a case of paperwork snafu in a magazine that I was able to verify. This takes place at Fort Carson CO when they made a mistake on their paperwork when they were ordering parts for a toilet. What they got instead was a 9 ton anchor from the Navy. I asked my brother about it and he said that it had happened. He also said that the Army couldn't return it because it had come of a decommissioned warship that was already headed to the breakers. So they wound up turning it into a Navy Memorial in the city of Colorado Springs.

pnakasone wrote:

Vince wrote:Paperwork in the Honorverse, as well as in real life, has to be done by people. And people can only do paperwork so fast (if it is to be done correctly and accurately), even when they are trying to expedite it.

Just imagine all the little ways someone can slow down the unloading and reloading of a ship by following the exact letter of the rules regarding the paperwork.

Then you have to add how motivated is the ships crew in hindering the process of unloading and reloading the ship because some dockside bean-counter got his shorts in twist over their lack of completely proper paper work regarding their supplies.

Never mind the paper work. Just following standard work processes would slow things down. Keep to a regular 8 to 5 duty day. Schedule all the PT tests for inconvenient times. Training. "Commander's Call." More training. Promotion testing. OJT Testing. Annual weapons (small arms) qualification. More "supervisors" and "inspectors" than you can shake a tree cat at. Find picayune things that require a Material Review Board to decide if an item is usable or has to be sent to depot. Or junked. "Steel Beach" Liberal pre-deployment leave. "Space of the Quarter" board, which just happens to tie up the Exec, Bosun, and every department senior Chief. Marine of the Quarter board, for the Marine CO, Gunny and senior NCOs. Etc.

When I was in the Defence logistics world we had a big poster of a cartoon, showing an aviation spare parts desk with the agitated aircraft mechanic pointing to a bit of kit on the shelf, while the clerk was telling him "I don't care if you can see it, the computer says we don't have it, so I'm not issuing it".
I'd moved from the Brigade to command the unit, and made a few enemies initially as I changed the culture from process to service.