Upcoming surplus of junior officers

ldwechsler wrote:

n7axw wrote:As I understood the deal at the end of ART, the Republic was going to be building warships for Manticore. That was one of the things that sending the r&d staff to bolthole was all about. If that is the case the RMN will continue to expand and will continue to experience shortages of commissioned officers, particularly after the hole that the first BOM annd Oyster Bay tore into both her enlisted and commissioned ranks.

What was specifically mentioned was building wallers in Haven yards and sending them to Manticore to install keyhole built in Beowulf. I hope we also see new hulls in the lighter classes.

Don

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It still doesn't add up. If thousands of middies are added to the fleet each year you need the vacancies. Manticore, which also trains Grayson cadets, has classes of 11,000 as of Ashes of Victory. Add to that Haven's trainees and you have a real lot of slots open.

Can they build ships THAT fast? You would need close to a thousand ships a year to handle that number of middies on their 'snottie' cruise. And, of course, after that as ensigns.

That would mean that each year they were producing as many ships as Manticore had at the Battle of Manticore. Each year.

Now granted that the LACs will take a very high percentage of the number, the problem in peacetime would become whether or not the shipbuilding nations would continue to build at that rate.

And, yes, a lot of the middies will serve a term and leave but I would guess they might go into the merchant marine, etc.

It is hard to get the people to support shipbuilding in peacetime. I know that the Conservative-Liberal coalition kept an Emergency going for the purpose of raising taxes but I would guess that might be harder in time of peace.

Silverwall wrote:This also is assuming that the fleet is not currently badly in deficit for junior officers.

Given the losses in the Battle of Manticore and Oyster Bay coupled with the relentless expansion of the LAC force I would not be at all suprised if there isn't a major deficit of officers currently in the RMN, especially in the LT/Senior LT range which will have sucked up the recent ensigns from previous graduating cohorts.

Tim wrote:

All of those highly educated middies are still in short supply. For quite some time there will not be enough junior officers to meet all the needs the GA has, especially Manticore.

Why? Let me count the ways.

1 Manning the Fleet. This point has been fairly well covered.

2 Manning the tech and training schools in the Talbert Cluster. A major program to integrating the cluster into the star empire is to improve the tech base and educational system. This project all by it self will swallow any excess to needs middies.

3 Manning an eyes and ears program to watch the Silsia officials mend their ways. There is nothing less threatening to those officials then a little midshipmen running back and forth learning to be an officer.

Sigs wrote:

Silverwall wrote:This also is assuming that the fleet is not currently badly in deficit for junior officers.

Given the losses in the Battle of Manticore and Oyster Bay coupled with the relentless expansion of the LAC force I would not be at all suprised if there isn't a major deficit of officers currently in the RMN, especially in the LT/Senior LT range which will have sucked up the recent ensigns from previous graduating cohorts.

A lot of those officers were lost WITH their ships. I don't think that there was that much construction to make it an extreme shortage.

Silverwall wrote:
I am fairly sure the lost ships and crews were planned to man the approx 200+ python lump of wallers that were under construction so yes loosing that many officers (and enlisted) will have put a massive crimp in the manning schedule. I am sure the original plan was to use the python lump wallers to allow them to mothball the old SD's that were instead lost in BoM.

pappilon wrote:I think the junior officer question, specifically the next 3 classes of Graduates from Saganami Island have no NEW ships to be assigned to. One flight left the slips just prior to OB/Yawata Strike. All the ones just laid dowm and all the ones docked for repairs wee destroyed. While that leaves need for replacement officers and enlisted, we have the issue of hulls not being in the pipeline for these shiny new kids to serve on.

Yes they will be needed, yes probably more than they can scrape together will be needed. Which does not solve the problem of what to do with tomorrow's officers today. Which are the next 3 classes from SI.

IIRC about Haven ships + keyhole: Since for the near future all ships will be coming from Haven and all keyhole platforms are being fabricated on Beowulf, all ships coming out of the yards at Bolthole will be sent to Beowulf for Keyhole and other equipment installations. which would be a good place to put those young graduates

Sigs wrote:

n7axw wrote:As I understood the deal at the end of ART, the Republic was going to be building warships for Manticore. That was one of the things that sending the r&d staff to bolthole was all about. If that is the case the RMN will continue to expand and will continue to experience shortages of commissioned officers, particularly after the hole that the first BOM annd Oyster Bay tore into both her enlisted and commissioned ranks.

What was specifically mentioned was building wallers in Haven yards and sending them to Manticore to install keyhole built in Beowulf. I hope we also see new hulls in the lighter classes.

Don

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Yeah but many of the Keyhole wallers will be going to the RHN. I doubt that they would try to keep the Keyhole platforms concentrated in the RMN and the GSN.

Sigs wrote:

Tim wrote:

All of those highly educated middies are still in short supply. For quite some time there will not be enough junior officers to meet all the needs the GA has, especially Manticore.

Why? Let me count the ways.

1 Manning the Fleet. This point has been fairly well covered.

2 Manning the tech and training schools in the Talbert Cluster. A major program to integrating the cluster into the star empire is to improve the tech base and educational system. This project all by it self will swallow any excess to needs middies.

3 Manning an eyes and ears program to watch the Silsia officials mend their ways. There is nothing less threatening to those officials then a little midshipmen running back and forth learning to be an officer.

I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not but I don't think that anyone is talking about sending the middies to do the tasks you described. They are send to the fleet and more experienced officers are taken from the fleet to man those positions.

pappilon wrote:Valid or invalid assumptions: (1) Whomever is running Saganami Island does not have the common sense to contact Admiral Cortez and find out how many brand spanking new middies he will be needing. (2) has not the brains or authority to slow the academic load to its original level thus stretching out the time of deployment. (3) A while shipyard of new construction got sent to Tevor's star for workup just before OB/Yawata Strike. That will take up some of those slots. (4) None of the next flight of construction from Haven can/will be sold to Manticore and Grayson. (5)Snotty cruises MUST be taken immediately following graduation. No reason they can't be used to make the installations of Keyhole platforms, work crews building the new orbitals, etc. then when nslots are available, make their cruise and start climbing their career ladders.

I realize it will slow them down but if they can't take a joke they should never have enlisted.