Oh, what the heck . . .

kzt wrote:It's not a must, it's a preference.
"We'd like if the crew was smaller. "
"Ok, how much loss of combat power, maintainability or survivability are you willing to accept?"
"None."
Ok, then how much more per ship are willing to spend?"
"None."
"Are you willing for us to spend about 10 years working on a pilot class to see what we can do and how well it works in practice?"
"No."
"Well, then good luck with that."

It is a preference for the navy, its a must for the private sector economy.

If Haven insists on keeping its manageable but suboptimal staffing levels per ship, they will not be able to take advantage of the SEM's focus on rebuilding their infrastructure. That focus will allow Haven a period comparable to post WWII for the USA. The US of the period simply did not have other producers competing for market share for almost 2 decades. They made bank during that period.

The SEM still has some civilian production but they do not have their full capacity to compete against. Not taking as much advantage of it when they can, they won't be able to grow their economy as quickly as they can.

The combination of low wages at Sanctuary and the influx of SEM tech means that replacing their older designs will be cheaper now than they ever will be again. Toss in the increased economic activity from the release crews into the merchant marine and its a real no brainer. This assumes they don't need to expand their fleet in the new geopolitical environment. They actually might need to expand their fleet.

kzt wrote:It's not a must, it's a preference.
"We'd like if the crew was smaller. "
"Ok, how much loss of combat power, maintainability or survivability are you willing to accept?"
"None."
Ok, then how much more per ship are willing to spend?"
"None."
"Are you willing for us to spend about 10 years working on a pilot class to see what we can do and how well it works in practice?"
"No."
"Well, then good luck with that."

It all comes back to price, quality and time - you can only choose 2.

PeterZ wrote:If Haven insists on keeping its manageable but suboptimal staffing levels per ship, they will not be able to take advantage of the SEM's focus on rebuilding their infrastructure. That focus will allow Haven a period comparable to post WWII for the USA. The US of the period simply did not have other producers competing for market share for almost 2 decades. They made bank during that period.

How does freeing up fire control techs and cooks translate into industrial capability?

a) It's not a lot of people proportionally, and
b) The people involved don't have any skills useful for the purpose.

It's like claiming that ending the NASA astronaut program will enable us to double JLTV production. Sorry, those 44 people, while very smart, will not enable Oshkosh to double production.

kzt wrote:How does freeing up fire control techs and cooks translate into industrial capability?

a) It's not a lot of people proportionally, and
b) The people involved don't have any skills useful for the purpose.

It's like claiming that ending the NASA astronaut program will enable us to double JLTV production. Sorry, those 44 people, while very smart, will not enable Oshkosh to double production.

I don't recall RMN being overloaded with cooks prior to the move towards greater automation. I recall that engineering had the greatest benefit from the automation. Power and environmental techs are very useful to a merchant fleet. Those other ratings freed can learn other support functions on a merchantman.

Joat42 wrote:

kzt wrote:It's not a must, it's a preference.
"We'd like if the crew was smaller. "
"Ok, how much loss of combat power, maintainability or survivability are you willing to accept?"
"None."
Ok, then how much more per ship are willing to spend?"
"None."
"Are you willing for us to spend about 10 years working on a pilot class to see what we can do and how well it works in practice?"
"No."
"Well, then good luck with that."

It all comes back to price, quality and time - you can only choose 2.

If you're lucky. It's easy enough to get 1 - if that.


The Navy would have to look at the numbers, but they know that currently they're spending *mumble* billions annually on naval personnel (salary, consumables, housing, training, etc). If you can shave just 8% off your manning requirements, how many years worth of 8% of that *mumble* billion does it make sense to spend to achieve that long term savings? (And what else, in terms of reliability, damage control, etc do you also give up to get that annual savings?)

But yes, if they're not willing to spend anything upfront to achieve long term savings then they'll obviously stick with the status quo. (Unless they do something really stupid like running on reduced manning without actually adding any automation to compensate - in which case you get bonus downsides to crew moral an efficiency - from overwork, plus extra maintenance issues, and topped with with reduced combat performance)

No, what they will do is declare how revolutionary their new designs are. Maybe they will call them Light Crew Ships and plan that instead of manning it with say 200 crew they will instead plan on manning it with 8 officers and 32 enlisted. And then when they have 50% of their LCS down with engineering casualties requiring engine replacement and the RHN operational evaluation points out they are totally unsurvivable in actual combat they will revise the manning plan. And declare that their new warships are not warships they are police ships, though oddly enough the actual naval police (called the coast guard for some reason) have much more reliable, survivable and better armed ships.

Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

Hi KZT,

Excellent pungent point!

Given the morass of our current navy and air force are in with their cute high tech 'solutions' to similar problems over the past 8+ years, it will be a while before more rational thinking can overcome the mess.

Best wishes always,

L

kzt wrote:It's not a must, it's a preference.
"We'd like if the crew was smaller. "
"Ok, how much loss of combat power, maintainability or survivability are you willing to accept?"
"None."
Ok, then how much more per ship are willing to spend?"
"None."
"Are you willing for us to spend about 10 years working on a pilot class to see what we can do and how well it works in practice?"
"No."
"Well, then good luck with that."

drothgery wrote:

kzt wrote:They lost a hugely expensive shipyard.

[...]

And they need to rebuild that shipyard.

They almost certainly will rebuild that shipyard because Graysons are Graysons. But they already have a much larger and more powerful fleet than any other single-system polity in the Honorverse, and will for years (also larger and more powerful than all but a handful of multi-system polities -- and at least one of the fleets that is larger is not more powerful). Masada is no longer anything remotely resembling a threat to the GSN. Haven is now allied with Manticore and Grayson. Unless Manticore is being governed by idiots (which has happened, but is not likely), Grayson does not need a massive home-grown shipyard complex anymore.

Do you remember the old saying about putting all your eggs in one basket?

Grayson may not need a new shipyard but it would only be prudent for them to build one, if only to cover against the, admittedly remote, possibility that something else happens to the other shipyards,,, and Graysons in general and Protector Benjamin in particular have been shown to be both prudent and to take the long view.

Some people might view it as duplication. I, on the other hand, prefer to refer to it as redundancy.

Rincewind wrote:

drothgery wrote:They almost certainly will rebuild that shipyard because Graysons are Graysons. But they already have a much larger and more powerful fleet than any other single-system polity in the Honorverse, and will for years (also larger and more powerful than all but a handful of multi-system polities -- and at least one of the fleets that is larger is not more powerful). Masada is no longer anything remotely resembling a threat to the GSN. Haven is now allied with Manticore and Grayson. Unless Manticore is being governed by idiots (which has happened, but is not likely), Grayson does not need a massive home-grown shipyard complex anymore.

Do you remember the old saying about putting all your eggs in one basket?

Grayson may not need a new shipyard but it would only be prudent for them to build one, if only to cover against the, admittedly remote, possibility that something else happens to the other shipyards,,, and Graysons in general and Protector Benjamin in particular have been shown to be both prudent and to take the long view.

Some people might view it as duplication. I, on the other hand, prefer to refer to it as redundancy.

I'm sure Grayson will build a shipyard - and not just because Graysons are Graysons. It makes real sense, and not purely from a redundancy standpoint, to have a native capability to maintain, repair, and build replacements for the fleet they already have.

But they may rebuild a smaller and more efficient yard than the ones they lost during Oyster Bay. They currently have about as big a fleet as they can man. But to avoid block obsolescence problems from hell they'll want to retire (and possibly mothball) the original flights of SD(P)s early.

For one thing it'll let them get more Keyhole II SD(P)s in service. It's not cost/time effective to rebuild the original Harringtons (with no keyhole at all) to Keyhole II standard.

For another you need to keep the workers working to retain the skills. And as noted above you really want to avoid the block obsolesce problem you get after you crash build most of your fleet and then go on a building holiday. Better to roll out at least incrementally improved designs slowly to replace and retire/scrap the oldest of your units -- even if they haven't reached the normal end of operational life.
You need to establish a reasonable replacement build cadence because boom - bust cycles are murder on military manufacturing and design capabilities.

(Plus having your own shipyard means you're not stuck buying whatever your allies are willing to sell you. If you want to go your own way with a design you only have to cinvince the people who are authorizing it; not the ones who are building it. And we know Grayson was, and presumably will remain, innovative in ship design; even when Manticore was dragging its feet)

Lowering the number of required crew does NOT mean going from 200 to 40. It might mean going from 200 to 150. Efficiency does count! It might sound like a relatively small deal just taking off 50 crew members but do something like that on enough ships and the savings really add up.

Remember there are SOME things where automation works really well. Right now, the military is experimenting with robotic scrubbers and new materials, etc. Yes, it's very handy to teach young sailors to chip paint, etc. But it doesn't retain the good ones well.

I would guess that a lot of the work even on RMN ships is "make work." You can't do tac trials eight hours a day for months. But
reducing the crew also means reducing the 'service' part of the crew, the cooks, etc. With large navies, the need for good techies means saving a few per ship can make a difference over all.

kzt wrote:No, what they will do is declare how revolutionary their new designs are. Maybe they will call them Light Crew Ships and plan that instead of manning it with say 200 crew they will instead plan on manning it with 8 officers and 32 enlisted. And then when they have 50% of their LCS down with engineering casualties requiring engine replacement and the RHN operational evaluation points out they are totally unsurvivable in actual combat they will revise the manning plan. And declare that their new warships are not warships they are police ships, though oddly enough the actual naval police (called the coast guard for some reason) have much more reliable, survivable and better armed ships.

Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.