Uncompromising way out of order snippet for Rose

cthia wrote:Besides, if that is the case, why does Honor need to have a chat with him if he's captured? It isn't like he's going to volunteer any information. And it isn't likely Honor is going to cut him loose and return him back to his navy as Eloise did Michelle. No, no, I'm not willing to catch this bus just yet. I'll wait for next.

At any rate, the face to face has my knickers in a twist.

I trust you can guess which scenario I wish is correct.

Bear in mind that Honor is the most advanced human telempathic interrogator there is. Other interrogators partnered with treecats will inevitably lag behind Honor.

Even if Kingsford is uncooperative, it's likely that Honor could pinpoint a lot of information simply by asking him difficult questions and gauging his reactions.

I imagine when the GA takes the League's headquarters off the chess board, it will be desperately searching for all evidence of MAlign interference in League politics and SLN decisions.

For example, he might lead to that MAlign agent in ONI, Captain Gweon. And then from there...

Castenea wrote:I would go for the reason a ship is generally designed to stand p to it's own guns are a bit more prosaic than just the jingoistic bit about our guns are the best in the world.

You know all specs on your own weapons, and if you have any questions about your new armoring scheme standing up to the guns, you only need to construct a sample and reserve range time. This may be a bit more complicated in practice than I make it sound, but your likely enemies are not going to make it easy to use their guns for testing.

To expand a bit on the "a bit more complicated in practice" a number of examples spring to mind where navies really should have diverted money away from other things to get some good, realistic, range testing time.

Though when you're dealing with naval rifles with 10,000+ yard range it's hard to do full up testing of armor piercing capabilities at those long ranges. And while you can do tests by inclining the target to simulate drop angle, and reducing charge to simulate terminal velocity, you're doing so based off of assumptions about terminal performance - and your data on penetration and post penetration detonation is no better than your assumptions (and you're vulnerable to effects that don't show themselves in that partially simulated testing - one example would be if shells developed an increasing wobble in flight). But if the British had done that work, they might have realized their pre-Greenboy shells had a marked tenancy to premature when hitting thick armor at long range and that might have spurred them to make improvements to shells and fuses a few years earlier (before Jutland).

Heck doing some high speed gunnery practice when the 'Cats were in acceptance trials might have shown the vibration issues made high speed combat problematic.


And then the US thought they had a good testing on their Mark 14 torpedoes; and therefore didn't need to spend their limited budget on additional tests but could instead put it towards weapon acquisition. Too bad a variety of failures meant that they were badly wrong about that.
IIRC the depth keeping problem was missed partly because the range equipment for measuring depth happened to have a offsetting miscalculation - and they weren't willing to risk damage to their expensive torpedo by firing it through a net or sheet that would provide simple physical evidence of it's running depth.

The (back) contact/impact exploder was viewed as a known good item carried over from the earlier torpedoes, and as such they didn't feel the need to spend their limited test budget retesting it. Unfortunately they didn't give sufficient allowance to the fact the Mark 14 was faster and the impact velocity the contact exploder was subject to was beyond it's tested envelope (and turned out to be beyond it's reliable operating envelope)

The magnetic exploder I actually give them more of a pass on. It worked fine in their trials and you'd need better knowledge than anyone had of how the Earth's magnetic field varied from place to place to even know you needed to perform tests and calibration in pretty much all of your expected combat zones - not just in the few well instrumented torpedo test ranges the they had. Pretty much everyone had problems with their magnetic exploders due to that.

But more extensive and realistic testing could have turned up these flaws before they were exposed in combat. But that's hard to get budget for, can be tricky to set up, and test that don't provide conclusive results due to something going wrong often end up as black marks against the officers in charge. (So there's a subtle, or not so subtle, perverse incentive against doing more tests because it more changes to get an 'oh shit' while tests that work, even ones the find problems are less likely to gain 'attaboys'.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:Besides, if that is the case, why does Honor need to have a chat with him if he's captured? It isn't like he's going to volunteer any information. And it isn't likely Honor is going to cut him loose and return him back to his navy as Eloise did Michelle. No, no, I'm not willing to catch this bus just yet. I'll wait for next.

At any rate, the face to face has my knickers in a twist.

I trust you can guess which scenario I wish is correct.

Bear in mind that Honor is the most advanced human telempathic interrogator there is. Other interrogators partnered with treecats will inevitably lag behind Honor.

Even if Kingsford is uncooperative, it's likely that Honor could pinpoint a lot of information simply by asking him difficult questions and gauging his reactions.

I imagine when the GA takes the League's headquarters off the chess board, it will be desperately searching for all evidence of MAlign interference in League politics and SLN decisions.

For example, he might lead to that MAlign agent in ONI, Captain Gweon. And then from there...

Why munroburton, I had completely forgotten about Honor's interrogation skills! How juicy! A most hearty thanks!

Are Honor's skills still sharper in the company of Nimitz?

Castenea wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:

No SL grasers and no LACs. At the crucial moment, she's on her own.

Oh, and no pods, either.

And the RMN's practice is to design its ships to stand up to its own weapons and tactical doctrine (as much as humanly possible, at least) because they've been the biggest. baddest offensive machine around for like the last 25-30 years. Why design your ships to stand up to the second baddest weapons mix when you have complete specs on the baddest of the bad and can design accordingly?

In fact, the rule of thumb of all competent naval designers has been to design their ships to resist their own weapons because logic suggests that at the time they build the thing, it will be the newest ship in their fleet and probably (at least briefly) in the world. Hence its weapons are the standard its defenses have to be able to meet.

This is known as a logical consequence.

I would go for the reason a ship is generally designed to stand p to it's own guns are a bit more prosaic than just the jingoistic bit about our guns are the best in the world.

You know all specs on your own weapons, and if you have any questions about your new armoring scheme standing up to the guns, you only need to construct a sample and reserve range time. This may be a bit more complicated in practice than I make it sound, but your likely enemies are not going to make it easy to use their guns for testing.

There is a reason why working models of Soviet military equipment was highly desired by NATO. Defectors who brought such examples over tended to be well taken care of.

I beg to differ on the "jingoistic" nature of the argument.

Of course the fact that you know the specs on your own hardware is one of the main reasons you use it as the threat you design against. You need to know penetrations before you can calculate armor against it, and you know you have accurate numbers on your own guns . . . assuming the weapon actually exists and isn't still in the prototype stage when you're designing the ship, as happened with the British Queen Elizabeths and (to some extent) the USN Iowas.

However, the "this is the baddest gun in the world" thinking is also very much a part of it, and not just because or national chauvinism.

Until the Washington Treaty, gun calibers and shell weights were in a steady upward spiral in all navies. That meant that each new class of ship, as it was introduced, generally represented a new gun with a new standard of destructiveness, and one therefore had to design against that threat, not the one that had applied last week or against the earlier generations of gun in service abroad. Until Josephus Daniels became SecNav under Woodrow Wilson, USN gun caliber had been climbing in a steady line from the South Carolina on. The same process had been going on abroad, although the Germans were slower to increase caliber. That was because they were designing a special purpose fleet optimized for combat in the very limited arena of the North Sea (where both sea states and visibility tended to be limited), whereas other Navies were designing for true blue water conditions. This progression can be seen clearly by looking at the US design process (dates are the dates the ships were ordered, not the dates they were completed):

SC-class: (1905) 8 x 12"/45 (4x2)
DE-class: (1906) 10 x 12"/45 (5x2)
FL-class: (1908) 10 x 12"/45 (5x2)
WY-class: (1909) 12 x 12"/50 (6x2)
NY-class: (1910) 10 x 14"/45 (5x2)
NV-class: (1911) 10 x 14"/45 (2x3; 2x2)
PA-class: (1912) 12 x 14"/45 (4x3)
NM-class: (1914) 12 x 14"/50 (4x3)
TN-class: (1915) 12 x 14"/50 (4x3)
CO-class: (1916) 8 x 16"/45 (4x2)
SD-class: (1919) 12 x 16"/50 (4x3)*

(The Lexington-class BCs would have mounted 8 x 16"50)

So between 1905, when South Carolina was ordered, and 1909 (just 3 years later), when Wyoming was ordered, broadside had increased by 50% and penetration at short range had increased by about 2.5" against Krupp cemented armor. Note that none of these 12" ships were actually in service when New York, the first of the 14" designs was actually designed and ordered. The same breakneck pattern was apparent overseas, especially with the British Royal Navy and the IJN, both of whom were consistently pushing caliber and shell weight upward, but naval intelligence was . . . sort of sucky during this period. Don't forget that as late as 1943 ONI estimated Yamato had 16" guns (not 18") and, as late as 1940, thought the Nagato-class was good for only 22 knots when they were actually capable of just over 26. (The belated discovery of how fast they really were is one reason the South Dakota IIs suddenly had their design speed upped from 25 knots to 28 very late in the design process.)

The Navy thought it had better intelligence than it had, but even what it thought it had was full of holes. So rather than design their ships to resist some theoretical foreign weapon upon which they might or might not have solid numbers --- and bearing in mind that from the very beginning of the Dreadnought era the USN was constantly pushing to up its gun calibers --- it only made sense to design ships to stand up to the same weight of metal they were capable of firing at an enemy. The 16'/45 of the Colorados (technically the Washington-class) were originally intended for the Tennessee-class, but SecNav Daniels refused to sanction the increase in armament. Likewise, when it was time for the Washingtons, he refused to sanction an increase in tonnage over the Tennessees, which was why they wound up with an 8-gun main battery rather than the 12-gun battery the General Board had wanted. The North Carolina was designed to resist 14" fire (although from a much heavier 14" shell than the earlier ships had fired) because of the naval limitation agreements and because that 14" shell was --- you guessed it --- the heaviest and most destructive shell known to be in service when she was designed. When FDR certified (after he'd been safely reelected as a peace-loving sort of guy) that foreign navies were busting the 14" limit in their new ships, she was upgunned from 12 x 14" to 9 x 16", but it was impossible to improve her armor at that late state in the design process. Hence she was the first "unbalanced" design the USN had produced since the South Carolinas.

My point is that there was a very sharp upward trend in armament and that shell weight increases as the cube of the increase in shell diameter, which meant that each upward bound in caliber meant a huge difference in penetration and destructiveness. It was only when the USN introduced the super-heavy shell in about 1940-42 that there was a major increase in penetration without an increase in shell diameter. (In fact, BuOrd rejected a designed --- and proofed --- 18" gun because it believed (correctly) that its new 16" shell would be at least as deadly, would have a higher rate of fire, and would allow more rounds on the same tonnage, and --- most importantly --- more shells in each salvo than an 18" armament would.)

All of the above is the reason I made the point (and I suppose I could have done it in a more serious, reasoned sort of way) that one big reason to design to match your new ship's armament was that (at least in USN practice) it really was going to represent the new ne plus ultra in destructiveness unless those pesky political considerations supervened.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Castenea wrote:I would go for the reason a ship is generally designed to stand p to it's own guns are a bit more prosaic than just the jingoistic bit about our guns are the best in the world.

You know all specs on your own weapons, and if you have any questions about your new armoring scheme standing up to the guns, you only need to construct a sample and reserve range time. This may be a bit more complicated in practice than I make it sound, but your likely enemies are not going to make it easy to use their guns for testing.

To expand a bit on the "a bit more complicated in practice" a number of examples spring to mind where navies really should have diverted money away from other things to get some good, realistic, range testing time.

Though when you're dealing with naval rifles with 10,000+ yard range it's hard to do full up testing of armor piercing capabilities at those long ranges. And while you can do tests by inclining the target to simulate drop angle, and reducing charge to simulate terminal velocity, you're doing so based off of assumptions about terminal performance - and your data on penetration and post penetration detonation is no better than your assumptions (and you're vulnerable to effects that don't show themselves in that partially simulated testing - one example would be if shells developed an increasing wobble in flight). But if the British had done that work, they might have realized their pre-Greenboy shells had a marked tenancy to premature when hitting thick armor at long range and that might have spurred them to make improvements to shells and fuses a few years earlier (before Jutland).

Heck doing some high speed gunnery practice when the 'Cats were in acceptance trials might have shown the vibration issues made high speed combat problematic.


And then the US thought they had a good testing on their Mark 14 torpedoes; and therefore didn't need to spend their limited budget on additional tests but could instead put it towards weapon acquisition. Too bad a variety of failures meant that they were badly wrong about that.
IIRC the depth keeping problem was missed partly because the range equipment for measuring depth happened to have a offsetting miscalculation - and they weren't willing to risk damage to their expensive torpedo by firing it through a net or sheet that would provide simple physical evidence of it's running depth.

The (back) contact/impact exploder was viewed as a known good item carried over from the earlier torpedoes, and as such they didn't feel the need to spend their limited test budget retesting it. Unfortunately they didn't give sufficient allowance to the fact the Mark 14 was faster and the impact velocity the contact exploder was subject to was beyond it's tested envelope (and turned out to be beyond it's reliable operating envelope)

The magnetic exploder I actually give them more of a pass on. It worked fine in their trials and you'd need better knowledge than anyone had of how the Earth's magnetic field varied from place to place to even know you needed to perform tests and calibration in pretty much all of your expected combat zones - not just in the few well instrumented torpedo test ranges the they had. Pretty much everyone had problems with their magnetic exploders due to that.

But more extensive and realistic testing could have turned up these flaws before they were exposed in combat. But that's hard to get budget for, can be tricky to set up, and test that don't provide conclusive results due to something going wrong often end up as black marks against the officers in charge. (So there's a subtle, or not so subtle, perverse incentive against doing more tests because it more changes to get an 'oh shit' while tests that work, even ones the find problems are less likely to gain 'attaboys'.

Nother minor point. Sometimes what "everybody knows" is so, isn't. For example, "everybody knows" the British BCs' deck armor was inadequate and their cordite was unstable, hence the losses to Beatty's BC Fleet at Jutland.

Interestingly enough, neither Beatty nor Jellicoe thought those factors explained the disaster immediately after the battle. They did, however, embrace those explanations when subsequent investigation started to suggest that the real culprit might just have been the fact that the BCs had adopted the worst ammo handling arrangements in the history of naval warfare. (Only a very minor exaggeration.)

Following the Dogger Bank action, the British BCs were under enormous pressure to increase their rate of fire because a whole bunch of problems, none of which were actually related to rate of fire, had resulted in "villainously bad" gunnery and very few hits. (The vibration to which Jonathan alludes was one of the real factors, so was trunnion tilt" [which no one yet knew to allow for]; rate of fire was not.)

In order to generate that rate of fire, shells and charges were stored where they'd be handier --- i.e., in the turrets and the turret lobbies rather than in the magazines where they were supposed to be. interestingly, in every case in which the hit immediately before the explosion can be determined with a fair degree of accuracy, it was a hit on a turret (that is, on the heaviest armor of the ship, which was effectively identical to contemporary battleship armor) which flashed over to the magazines. Almost certainly, it was those improperly stored shells and charges which provided the ignition chain, not the magazine penetration "everybody knew" about. The one BC hit on a turret and not destroyed was HMS Lion, Beatty's flag ship, and Captain Chattfield, his flag captain, who eventually became First Sea Lord himself, was the only BC captain who refused to relax safety regs to increase rate of fire.

One interesting consequence of this, as both Norman Friedman and David K. Brown point out, is that it's very probable that the obsession with deck armor which was such a pain in the butt for designers post-Jutland was, in fact, misplaced. Substantially lighter armor could have been accepted, they argue, and deck armor costs far more tonnage per inch of thickness than belt or turret armor does.

Castenea wrote:I would go for the reason a ship is generally designed to stand p to it's own guns are a bit more prosaic than just the jingoistic bit about our guns are the best in the world.

You know all specs on your own weapons, and if you have any questions about your new armoring scheme standing up to the guns, you only need to construct a sample and reserve range time. This may be a bit more complicated in practice than I make it sound, but your likely enemies are not going to make it easy to use their guns for testing.

There is a reason why working models of Soviet military equipment was highly desired by NATO. Defectors who brought such examples over tended to be well taken care of.

I'm thinking of the PT boats of WWII that relied on maneuverability to survive. There are modern versions of these, also--ships that can throw an anti-ship missile over the radar horizon but have minimal ability to deal with incoming missiles.

Wait'll you hear Honor talking to Kingsford.
In person.

Anyone else besides me can't get over this huge revelation?

Well, anyone else besides me contemplating on what Honor has to say to him, in a nutshell?

Yes? Well, anyone else besides me think it's some kind of ultimatum with Eighth Fleet parked at the edge of the system?

Well, how the hell else does she get to chat it up with Kingsford? In person!

Why do you think Kingsford is sitting in front of Honor, possibly having gone somewhere and having been captured? Kingsford isn't likely to be leaving the Sol system, probably not even Earth so unless she sends him some kind of "diplomatic note" communication, she is going to have to go where he is.

We saw her do this to go and make a "request" of President Pritchard- backed up by a RMN Fleet.

How about a combined fleet shows up well outside Sol's hyperlimit sometime after a DD has sneaked in near the Sol system and dropped a FTL bouy plus sent a few Ghost Rider drones in to lurk near Earth? Then Honor would be calling Kingsford from a distance he can't scramble an attack against in any kind of usefull timeframe.

That would make a real interesting practical and psycological demonstration several things.

1) that RMN really does have FTL communications.
2) RMN can put really sneaky drones right into the heart of the Sol system, nobody either saw them comming, and probably nobody is getting a good position lock on them now.
3) RMN (and probably accompanying RHN) ships can get to the heart of the League with no apparent problem.
4) Honor can also have the entire exchange broadcast in-clear thought the system so EVERYBODY gets to hear exactly what she is there to say and Kingsford's respone.

What she has to say and the reaction by Kingsford is the tricky part. She really wouldn't be able to hang around long because if her message is essentialy an offer to call off the war if the SL stands down and it is rejected she will have to do something about it. Part of that is Kingsford would be in a major political bind and this is not something that can be kicked upstairs for the entire league to discuss first. Unlike President Pritchard or Queen Elizabeth, Kingsford isn't the head of government.....and throwing this at the Assembly to come to a
conclusion and give an answer (yes would be nice) is like asking a herd of cats to do someting right after you have sprayed them with a firehose.
Kingsford making a unilateral decision to order SLN forces to stand down (and return as nessisary from things like commerce raiding) and effectivly surrender to the GA isn't going to play well with the Mandarins and a lot of political operatives. He also may not live very long if somebody (with MAlign intentions) immediatly shoots him as a traitor and blocks the orders from going out. Honor with 100 GA SDs could be shooting down into the gravity well at any SLN ships that try to come out at her have to climb out of it and, possibly, she can have intercept solutions to take them before they can cross the hyper-limit. If the conversation doesn't go well, she is still sitting outside the hyperlimit (thank you FTL) and just go if she doesn't want to engage in fighting but she will have just made the very broad point that the GA is the one with the options to respond.
A potential response to a NO answer is the fleet kills many of not every SLN ship that tries to come out of the system at her and then she "just" goes into hyper and away.

Honor MIGHT bring in the same fleet under stealth (which the SLN and Sol system defence net probably wouldn't catch if the fleet comes in far enough out) and then have the conversation with Kingsford on a "secure" channel but record it. Even if the fleet could pull that off-- one might think the SLN "home" base should notice 100 or so SDs making even a minimum speed hyperspace downward transition in formation-- She would have to convice him she was who she said she was, where she was and what she had with her.

Just wild speculation.

Jonathan_S wrote:But more extensive and realistic testing could have turned up these flaws before they were exposed in combat. But that's hard to get budget for, can be tricky to set up, and test that don't provide conclusive results due to something going wrong often end up as black marks against the officers in charge. (So there's a subtle, or not so subtle, perverse incentive against doing more tests because it more changes to get an 'oh shit' while tests that work, even ones the find problems are less likely to gain 'attaboys'.

But luckily in the Honorverse you apparently don't have to worry about those sorts of things, and you can deploy into combat the first generation of missiles made by newly trained people on newly assembled productions lines using new fabrication gear controlled by newly designed and constructed fire control systems running just written code deployed on newly built computer hardware. Which is what they seem to plan to do at Beowulf.

runsforcelery wrote:Nother minor point. Sometimes what "everybody knows" is so, isn't. For example, "everybody knows" the British BCs' deck armor was inadequate and their cordite was unstable, hence the losses to Beatty's BC Fleet at Jutland.

Interestingly enough, neither Beatty nor Jellicoe thought those factors explained the disaster immediately after the battle. They did, however, embrace those explanations when subsequent investigation started to suggest that the real culprit might just have been the fact that the BCs had adopted the worst ammo handling arrangements in the history of naval warfare. (Only a very minor exaggeration.)

Following the Dogger Bank action, the British BCs were under enormous pressure to increase their rate of fire because a whole bunch of problems, none of which were actually related to rate of fire, had resulted in "villainously bad" gunnery and very few hits. (The vibration to which Jonathan alludes was one of the real factors, so was trunnion tilt" [which no one yet knew to allow for]; rate of fire was not.)

In order to generate that rate of fire, shells and charges were stored where they'd be handier --- i.e., in the turrets and the turret lobbies rather than in the magazines where they were supposed to be. interestingly, in every case in which the hit immediately before the explosion can be determined with a fair degree of accuracy, it was a hit on a turret (that is, on the heaviest armor of the ship, which was effectively identical to contemporary battleship armor) which flashed over to the magazines. Almost certainly, it was those improperly stored shells and charges which provided the ignition chain, not the magazine penetration "everybody knew" about. The one BC hit on a turret and not destroyed was HMS Lion, Beatty's flag ship, and Captain Chattfield, his flag captain, who eventually became First Sea Lord himself, was the only BC captain who refused to relax safety regs to increase rate of fire.

One interesting consequence of this, as both Norman Friedman and David K. Brown point out, is that it's very probable that the obsession with deck armor which was such a pain in the butt for designers post-Jutland was, in fact, misplaced. Substantially lighter armor could have been accepted, they argue, and deck armor costs far more tonnage per inch of thickness than belt or turret armor does.

Though thicker deck armor probably paid some unexpected dividends with the introduction, a couple decades later, of dive bombers able to put pretty heavy bombs onto maneuvering warships.

Nobody could armor against the terminal velocity of a high level bomber's armor piercing bomb. But fortunately for battleships until guided weapons came along almost another decade later the chances to hit from a high level bomber against a warship under way were poor, to say the least. (And dive bombers produced much lower impact velocities so their bombs weren't as capable of piercing heavy armor)


However circling back to testing, defensive armor arrangements and things like impact of ammo handling (or even how dangerous cirdite was in the confines of a ship's powder room were prohibitively difficult sand expensive to really test. So while guns might be tested against individual plates or armor nobody could afford to build a new battleship to cripple or destroy in testing. So at best you only got to really see how the whole protection scheme worked when the BB is obsolete and you get permission to to a Sinkex instead of immediately selling her to a scrapyard (or leaving her to rust in reserve). Then maybe you can incorporate your findings into your next new design - only 20 or more years after commissioning the now expended ship. Worst case you found out about flaw when enemy fire found the weak spot in your design and ruined your whole day.

runsforcelery wrote:Wait'll you hear Honor talking to Kingsford.
In person.

cthia wrote:Anyone else besides me can't get over this huge revelation?

Well, anyone else besides me contemplating what Honor has to say to him, in a nutshell?

Yes? Well, anyone else besides me think it's some kind of ultimatum with Eighth Fleet parked at the edge of the system?

Well, how the hell else does she get to chat it up with Kingsford? In person!

Brigade XO wrote:Why do you think Kingsford is sitting in front of Honor, possibly having gone somewhere and having been captured? Kingsford isn't likely to be leaving the Sol system, probably not even Earth so unless she sends him some kind of "diplomatic note" communication, she is going to have to go where he is.

We saw her do this to go and make a "request" of President Pritchard- backed up by a RMN Fleet.

How about a combined fleet shows up well outside Sol's hyperlimit sometime after a DD has sneaked in near the Sol system and dropped a FTL bouy plus sent a few Ghost Rider drones in to lurk near Earth? Then Honor would be calling Kingsford from a distance he can't scramble an attack against in any kind of usefull timeframe.

That would make a real interesting practical and psycological demonstration several things.

1) that RMN really does have FTL communications.
2) RMN can put really sneaky drones right into the heart of the Sol system, nobody either saw them comming, and probably nobody is getting a good position lock on them now.
3) RMN (and probably accompanying RHN) ships can get to the heart of the League with no apparent problem.
4) Honor can also have the entire exchange broadcast in-clear thought the system so EVERYBODY gets to hear exactly what she is there to say and Kingsford's respone.

What she has to say and the reaction by Kingsford is the tricky part. She really wouldn't be able to hang around long because if her message is essentialy an offer to call off the war if the SL stands down and it is rejected she will have to do something about it. Part of that is Kingsford would be in a major political bind and this is not something that can be kicked upstairs for the entire league to discuss first. Unlike President Pritchard or Queen Elizabeth, Kingsford isn't the head of government.....and throwing this at the Assembly to come to a
conclusion and give an answer (yes would be nice) is like asking a herd of cats to do someting right after you have sprayed them with a firehose.
Kingsford making a unilateral decision to order SLN forces to stand down (and return as nessisary from things like commerce raiding) and effectivly surrender to the GA isn't going to play well with the Mandarins and a lot of political operatives. He also may not live very long if somebody (with MAlign intentions) immediatly shoots him as a traitor and blocks the orders from going out. Honor with 100 GA SDs could be shooting down into the gravity well at any SLN ships that try to come out at her have to climb out of it and, possibly, she can have intercept solutions to take them before they can cross the hyper-limit. If the conversation doesn't go well, she is still sitting outside the hyperlimit (thank you FTL) and just go if she doesn't want to engage in fighting but she will have just made the very broad point that the GA is the one with the options to respond.
A potential response to a NO answer is the fleet kills many of not every SLN ship that tries to come out of the system at her and then she "just" goes into hyper and away.

Honor MIGHT bring in the same fleet under stealth (which the SLN and Sol system defence net probably wouldn't catch if the fleet comes in far enough out) and then have the conversation with Kingsford on a "secure" channel but record it. Even if the fleet could pull that off-- one might think the SLN "home" base should notice 100 or so SDs making even a minimum speed hyperspace downward transition in formation-- She would have to convice him she was who she said she was, where she was and what she had with her.

Just wild speculation.

Absofrigginlutely!

I'll board this bus! It's the scenic route! In fact, give me a yearly pass.

I can't really see Kingsford leaving the system either. If he does, he deserves to be captured. How idiotic would that be? A state of de facto war -- at least -- exists, plus the League, he, has dispatched a "commerce raiding" force. Surely he knows how the game is played. Tit for tat!

Can't I give any Solarians any credit? And he's a frickin' Admiral! He's going to risk exposing himself in territory where the godawful Manties are operating??? If so, maybe Kingsford himself would blame it on the alcohol and the arrogance. I blame it on the stupidity and incompetence. You don't expose your King. Or your Queen in Beth's case.

Yea, she did it before. Remember, this is the last book. Perhaps this is her last deathride, but she's going to put a stop to the madness. She doesn't want it to be a deathride. But if the Sollies want to go there, she's going to take a lot of people with her.

It is this thought where my worries lie. My brain is far past "Is she in the Sol system?" I'm more concerned with "Is she going to survive while chatting Kingsford?" In person.

I don't even need to elaborate on the rest of your... speculation. It can't be laid out any better other than to stamp it...

100 % USDA P R I M E BEEF


Right down to the scenario. Makes me slobber and drool. Drool and slobber. Slobber and drool... it just won't stop!


DOSES OF K U D O S BRIGADE XO!

.