Stratifying navies

kzt wrote:What made Grayson highly dangerous was their allies. Committing the scale of forces needed against them offers the possibility that your allies will attack them while you are occupied in your operation against Grayson. The actual bestdown of Grayson might take 48 hours, but it takes at least a month where a big chunk of your forces are committed to the operation, and probably more like 2+ months.

As was mentioned earlier, how much you have to protect matters, but also who your allies and enemies. If you have a known enemy that you have to continually guard against then your freedom of action is constrained. If you don't have any enemies like that, have no need to garrison againt revolts and have lots of allies around your important areas it makes your ability to project power much greater than someone in the reverse situation with the same size military.

But is that important in ranking their force alone?

For example, modern Spain - a NATO member in good steading, decent tech, but not the best out there, and a force on the smaller side. But: mess with them and you have to mess with NATO - ie the US (unless it's a squabble about Gibralter - I believe the US will offer to arbitrate that one, but stand off from taking sides in any confrontation).

So because they have the US and NATO with them, are they a Tier 1 force? or is it just a consideration in their rankings? Shouldn't the rankings be concerned with their individual firepower, so in case they pull a Venezuela or an Iran and turn on their former allies, their ranking be consistent?

Being in someone's shadow should be seen as a negative - their native defense industry cannot replace/repair damaged and depleted units, and their military is not necessarily sized/built appropriately to deal with all threats, due to reliance on allies and their capabilities. Also, being the strong member of an alliance draws risks - important, strategic units could be engaged elsewhere defending weak allies, weakening your home defenses by virtue of strategic dispersal.

For example, WWII France - their northern defenses were dependant on Belgium and Holland's defenses. A draught which dried the lowlands turned fields that normally were marsh into highways for the Wehrmacht's tanks, and allowed Germany to quickly go around France's main line of defense. While Belgium was more in France's shadow than vice versa, France did depend on their military for their Northern defenses, so concentrated their defenses in other places. In which case, allies made them weaker.

Interesting that it appears this discussion is shaping up to have been the supporting cast or backdrop of the Honorverse Analytics: Why Manticore Won the War thread that has been allowed to die.

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:What made Grayson highly dangerous was their allies. Committing the scale of forces needed against them offers the possibility that your allies will attack them while you are occupied in your operation against Grayson. The actual bestdown of Grayson might take 48 hours, but it takes at least a month where a big chunk of your forces are committed to the operation, and probably more like 2+ months.

As was mentioned earlier, how much you have to protect matters, but also who your allies and enemies. If you have a known enemy that you have to continually guard against then your freedom of action is constrained. If you don't have any enemies like that, have no need to garrison againt revolts and have lots of allies around your important areas it makes your ability to project power much greater than someone in the reverse situation with the same size military.

But is that important in ranking their force alone?

For example, modern Spain - a NATO member in good steading, decent tech, but not the best out there, and a force on the smaller side. But: mess with them and you have to mess with NATO - ie the US (unless it's a squabble about Gibralter - I believe the US will offer to arbitrate that one, but stand off from taking sides in any confrontation).

So because they have the US and NATO with them, are they a Tier 1 force? or is it just a consideration in their rankings? Shouldn't the rankings be concerned with their individual firepower, so in case they pull a Venezuela or an Iran and turn on their former allies, their ranking be consistent?

Being in someone's shadow should be seen as a negative - their native defense industry cannot replace/repair damaged and depleted units, and their military is not necessarily sized/built appropriately to deal with all threats, due to reliance on allies and their capabilities. Also, being the strong member of an alliance draws risks - important, strategic units could be engaged elsewhere defending weak allies, weakening your home defenses by virtue of strategic dispersal.

For example, WWII France - their northern defenses were dependant on Belgium and Holland's defenses. A draught which dried the lowlands turned fields that normally were marsh into highways for the Wehrmacht's tanks, and allowed Germany to quickly go around France's main line of defense. While Belgium was more in France's shadow than vice versa, France did depend on their military for their Northern defenses, so concentrated their defenses in other places. In which case, allies made them weaker.

The ranking must be considered and made in isolation or it wouldn't make any sense.

Can Grayson effectively take care of itself if attacked? One's allies may be quite busy with their own beeswax and or bees and or hive.

But without considering their allies the pre-First Haven War RMN would be a low tier power.It was the strategic depth and forces of their allies which allowed them to survive long enough to develop the weapons and ships which won that war

Roguevictory wrote:But without considering their allies the pre-First Haven War RMN would be a low tier power.It was the strategic depth and forces of their allies which allowed them to survive long enough to develop the weapons and ships which won that war

Even without its allies it was probably the 4th or 5th largest Navy in the Honorverse, with dozens and dozens of wallers - and some of the best technology.
I fail to see how it could be a low tier power just because it didn't have much strategic depth.
I could see a pre-war analyst rating them 3rd tier, if they want excessively fine grained, but not any lower than that. (SLN would be ranked then 1st tier, the only question is does Haven, with the 2nd largest fleet, get a tier of their own; or are they ranked in either 1st tier with the SLN or 2nd tier with Manticore and the Andies)

Don't forget the Warrior. Great Britain had far and away the greatest wall of ships of the line, using tried and true (old) technology. The French built two ironclads that suddenly changed the equation, although it transpired that they weren't blue water vessels so would protect France against wooden sailing fleets, but couldn't project power.
Great Britain built the Warrior. For it's time the greatest leap forward, a blue water steam powered iron clad that could probably defeat whole fleets of old style ships of the line.
However Admiralty house went "What have we done, we've gone from having 40 (?) effective ships of the line more than anyone else to having one". As it turned out industrial Britain was up to the task of outbuilding everyone else right up to the next big shift, Dreadnaught.

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:The are both single system polities, which are highly vulnerable to a direct attack, and have way to get outside assistance fast enough to matter.. In a protracted war they will get hammered when someone drops in and spends 48 hours flattening them.

So, strategic depth is an important measure of naval strength. Unfortunately, Haven is an example of strategic depth, while Manticore wasn't (But the alliance was...). It's definitely a factor, but is it THE defining factor?

If I may, all of the factors that have been mentioned are important but I really don't think there is ONE truly deciding factor. Strategic Depth most certainly would give the SLN the deciding edge if that was THE factor, as perhaps might "supporting Gross Domestic Product."

There are so many different factors to account for that I made no attempt to even begin to list them all. There are a lot of bald or white haired military analysts out there for a reason.

robert132 wrote:If I may, all of the factors that have been mentioned are important but I really don't think there is ONE truly deciding factor. Strategic Depth most certainly would give the SLN the deciding edge if that was THE factor, as perhaps might "supporting Gross Domestic Product."

There are so many different factors to account for that I made no attempt to even begin to list them all. There are a lot of bald or white haired military analysts out there for a reason.

Yes, multiple factors certainly have to be considered and it's difficult to compare grapes, apples and watermelons.

Whether the SLN ever actually had strategic depth is debatable. My guess based on various textev sources is that the SLN's Battle Fleet has no more than seven fleet bases and none further than a hundred light years away from Sol.

This, combined with all the various wormhole connections, gives the League almost no real defensive depth at all. Certainly not compared with circa 1904PD Haven - which had major fleet bases as far away from its capital as Seaford 9 and Barnett.

The vast majority of their Reserve is useless in the face of any imminent threats. They don't have the manpower, money or time to activate more than a tiny percentage of it before they've either won or been destroyed.

Daryl wrote:Don't forget the Warrior. Great Britain had far and away the greatest wall of ships of the line, using tried and true (old) technology. The French built two ironclads that suddenly changed the equation, although it transpired that they weren't blue water vessels so would protect France against wooden sailing fleets, but couldn't project power.
Great Britain built the Warrior. For it's time the greatest leap forward, a blue water steam powered iron clad that could probably defeat whole fleets of old style ships of the line.
However Admiralty house went "What have we done, we've gone from having 40 (?) effective ships of the line more than anyone else to having one". As it turned out industrial Britain was up to the task of outbuilding everyone else right up to the next big shift, Dreadnaught.

That happened a lot in the mid and late nineteenth century. E.g. Repeating rifles, USS Monitor, breech loading artillery, cased ammunition, machine guns, etc. etc.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:But without considering their allies the pre-First Haven War RMN would be a low tier power.It was the strategic depth and forces of their allies which allowed them to survive long enough to develop the weapons and ships which won that war

Even without its allies it was probably the 4th or 5th largest Navy in the Honorverse, with dozens and dozens of wallers - and some of the best technology.
I fail to see how it could be a low tier power just because it didn't have much strategic depth.
I could see a pre-war analyst rating them 3rd tier, if they want excessively fine grained, but not any lower than that. (SLN would be ranked then 1st tier, the only question is does Haven, with the 2nd largest fleet, get a tier of their own; or are they ranked in either 1st tier with the SLN or 2nd tier with Manticore and the Andies)

There were more than a few references that Manticore has been a first tier navy for decades, so tier is not a straight ranking.

The SLN has always headed the first rate navies until it's showdown with Manticore proved it was actually more like the second/third rate navy that used to "protect" Silesia. Haven, Manticore, Beowulf, and the Andermani were all also rated as first tier navies. All of these are manned by personnel who (generally) spend years in formal training, especially in specialized institutions (Saganami Island, Warner's Havenite officer school, etc).

Grayson is sort of a special case, cusp first/second-tier, has built an extremely large navy, relative to it's GSP and total possible manpower. Training is first notch, especially after Flag in Exile, and by the latest books rivals Manticoran training. But until/unless Grayson starts annexing additional planets, it's strength/rating is more or less as high as it's going to get. Meanwhile, if some of the other second-tiers got their shit together, they could leap over Grayson into first-tier status.

Second tier navies officially included Silesian Confederate Navy, although really they were (in my opinion) a third-rate because they couldn't even protect their own space. This tier would currently be headed by Grayson, but Erewhon, Sidemore, and the various SLN SDF's that have at least one fully functional waller squadron in their navies would all be found here. Training in the second tier is good, but the best second-tiers get their training at allied first-tier facilities to supplement their own generally solid training.

Cusp-second tier, but really third tier would consist of navies like Zanzibar, who had only LAC's prior to signing up with Manticore to face Haven, and even as of AAC or later doubtfully have anything larger than cruisers of their own, if you strip away all the Manticoran loaners in their personnel lists. Probably some others here, but Zanzibar is the most notable.

Third rates, Silesian Confederate Navy, prior to being divvied up between Anderman and Manticore, and virtually every other "star nation" that is comprised of either small/light forces, and little or no formal, specialized training. Cronyism and corruption would be rampant in the third tier which is also a major consideration in classifying a navy third tier. A good example of here would be the official Mesan System Navy would definitely be third-tier, but the Mesan Alliance Navy is at least second-tier, possibly even qualifying for first-tier.


First tier navies in Honorverse are almost as easy to pick out and rank as the real modern world. In no particular order, America, Russia, China, Japan are all easily first tier.

Second tiers would be Canada, almost the entirety of NATO/UN, the various Russian countries that once opposed NATO and similar. The big thing here is most of these nations don't usually build their own hardware, they'd prefer to buy from first-tier. Training for second-tiers however is usually just as good as the real world first tiers, while in Honorverse there is a small but noticeable descrease in training levels.