Remaining holes in SLN intel

saber964 wrote:

cthia wrote:The thing that is shocking, is that if the idiots didn't have an ONI, they wouldn't be any worse off.

They would be better off.

But the US Navy would have been better off without the official assessments of the IJN as of Dec 6, 1941.

The problem with ALL intelligence organizations is figuring out WHICH facts are important.

Manticore having 300 SD(P)s did not seem important when Battle Fleet had thousands.

The problem was, of course, that the Sollies had not examined the weaponry. In all the battles we've seen they've been seriously "outgunned."

Cruisers took out the Jean Bart. Cruisers beat the far larger fleet of capital ships led by Crandall. And Harrington casually wiped out Filareta's forces.

The question becomes WHY didn't the ONI look? And the answer is that they were directed not to look. Haven was the second largest empire around and the Andermanni were not far behind. Manticore was growing. And no one was doing any checking at all.

It would have taken no more than turning ONE tactical officer, maybe one who had not received a promotion or who had been discharged in a bad way and they could have gotten much of the information they wanted.

But they did not do that. It would have cost next to nothing but no one bothered to check.

The question may turn out to be answered. The interesting thing would be whether that would someone like Gweon who is giving the mandarins the truth because it suits MAlign's purposes.

In all fairness to the SLN, how would the US intelligence apparatus handle reports that (say) Chile had developed super weapons?

If those reports were also at the end of a communications chain that was days (or weeks or months) in length I am not so sure they would be given very much weight.

When the WHJ was discoverd, it was intitaly one wormhole to Beowulf. That put a major and early menber of the League as the contact point and it would appear that Beowulf and Manticore came to an early and sold agreeement on sharing the operation and profit from the terminus of the bridge.
That would make it difficult for OFS to just swoop in and grab Manticore with some claim of saving or protecting them. We don't have any idea of the size of the Beowulf SDF at the time but it had to be larger than the the RMN and it already would have had it's own experience with providing commerce protection along the routes with it's other trading partners.
Manticore may unreasonable distance from Beowulf for direct hyperspace flight but it was also linked to other places by regular trade routes. Solarian trade was going to Manticore, to Haven, even to Silesia, just not though wormholes.

It would be really really intersting to see a map of the the "historic" pre-junction trade routes out in the direction of the Haven Quadrant prior to the discovery of the MWHJ. Not that RFC has the time to draw one of those up...big smile. How did and through where did the trade flow? It would be like looking at Earth pre-19th century. The wormholes have a greater effect on trade than things like the Suez and Panam Canals or any of the 19th and 20th Century railroads, it is like creating an teleportation link through the earth rather than shipping cargo by water or rail.

Beowulf, prior to the current problems and for as long as the Manticore-Sigma Draconis bridge was know, was a trade powerhouse in it's own right with daughter colonies and a serious merchant marine as well as a politcial force in the League Assembly. There is no way it is going to let OFS control of that lucrative trade link which -even before any other of it's termini would have been explored, would have been recogized as the conduit for traffic and so a major source of revenue from the interior of the League out to a populated quadrant.
Most likely some sort of mutal defence agreement would have been reached (and broadcast to the League) between Beowulf and Manticore which would have been the opening round of a hands-off message forcefully delivered to OFS which might have quickly been sniffing around. Not sure how bad OFS was at that time but clearly Beowulf would have wanted to keep rivals and bloodsuckers away from the new sourse of income and trade. Remember, Beowulf is also going to want the probable reduced rates that the partnership ownership of that end of the terminus would bring as they are an industrialized and exporting system in their own right.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:In all fairness to the SLN, how would the US intelligence apparatus handle reports that (say) Chile had developed super weapons?

If those reports were also at the end of a communications chain that was days (or weeks or months) in length I am not so sure they would be given very much weight.

Yup, discounting the early reports was perfectly reasonable. Hell, SDFs probably lie to Battle Fleet every so often for some reason or another. I'm sure Manticore would discount a report that Random Verge System 112 had ships that could ignore hyperlimits or random Solly System 43 had spherical impellers.

Regardless the Sollies probably should have realized they needed a reanalysis after the first two defeats. I can forgive discounting Bygn losing. That guy was a moron and could have screwed up, but twice? Somethings probably wrong.

The Solarian League leaders also suffer from delusions of grandeur, tripped up even further by a military that is built on patronage and not on accomplishment. The military leaders know full-well that they may not be able to rely on the incompetent "John Doe" -- whose family name, ONLY, is responsible for him even being in the navy -- to correctly deduce what he actually saw in some godforsaken sector and emerge on the right side of reality. In fact, it would be easier for Solarians to believe that God destroyed their ships than the wickedly simple and diminutive system of neobarbs to the West. To Solarians, Manticorans aren't just neobarbs, they are small, insignificant neobarbs. Who simply happen to be sitting in a golden pot at the end of their MWJ rainbow. Rich neobarbs. But still neobarbs. Neanderthals with a centicredit.

It is quite difficult to impart institutional arrogance.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:In all fairness to the SLN, how would the US intelligence apparatus handle reports that (say) Chile had developed super weapons?

If those reports were also at the end of a communications chain that was days (or weeks or months) in length I am not so sure they would be given very much weight.

Yup, discounting the early reports was perfectly reasonable. Hell, SDFs probably lie to Battle Fleet every so often for some reason or another. I'm sure Manticore would discount a report that Random Verge System 112 had ships that could ignore hyperlimits or random Solly System 43 had spherical impellers.

Regardless the Sollies probably should have realized they needed a reanalysis after the first two defeats. I can forgive discounting Bygn losing. That guy was a moron and could have screwed up, but twice? Somethings probably wrong.

Actually you are both wrong. We have military attaches in just about every country. Any country that is reasonably large will have one for each service with one of the officers selected as boss. It's not directly on seniority; services are charged with dealing with the countries and always take charge. Often creates issues. However, if Chile was developing weapons it would be just about impossible for our attaches not to know about it. Keep in mind that Manticore was not keeping its naval buildup a secret. Details were secret. But anyone paying attention would learn a lot.

The Sollie navy is huge. Lots of officers. It would not be difficult to have someone assigned to key nations not in the League. It was wildly negligent not to have people on Haven, Manticore, Grayson, Anderman, and other planets.

cthia wrote:The Solarian League leaders also suffer from delusions of grandeur, tripped up even further by a military that is built on patronage and not on accomplishment. The military leaders know full-well that they may not be able to rely on the incompetent "John Doe" -- whose family name, ONLY, is responsible for him even being in the navy -- to correctly deduce what he actually saw in some godforsaken sector and emerge on the right side of reality. In fact, it would be easier for Solarians to believe that God destroyed their ships than the wickedly simple and diminutive system of neobarbs to the West. To Solarians, Manticorans aren't just neobarbs, they are small, insignificant neobarbs. Who simply happen to be sitting in a golden pot at the end of their MWJ rainbow. Rich neobarbs. But still neobarbs. Neanderthals with a centicredit.

It is quite difficult to impart institutional arrogance.

PLUS! What superpower, which reigned supreme for centuries, wouldn't suffer complete and utter insane denial of being toppled from the TOP DOG spot?

Would Americans have an easy time finding out that not only are we not the top dogs in the hunt anymore, but that we are no longer even in the hunt? And get this, the new TOP DOG is lil' ole Panama, because it just so happens it sits on a Canal that shortens trade routes.

Hell, Americans would riot and rage against the government before believing and accepting the very same hard facts.

Winston Churchill used that fact to rile his own party, people and government into action at the advancing Nazi war machine.

.

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:The Solarian League leaders also suffer from delusions of grandeur, tripped up even further by a military that is built on patronage and not on accomplishment. The military leaders know full-well that they may not be able to rely on the incompetent "John Doe" -- whose family name, ONLY, is responsible for him even being in the navy -- to correctly deduce what he actually saw in some godforsaken sector and emerge on the right side of reality. In fact, it would be easier for Solarians to believe that God destroyed their ships than the wickedly simple and diminutive system of neobarbs to the West. To Solarians, Manticorans aren't just neobarbs, they are small, insignificant neobarbs. Who simply happen to be sitting in a golden pot at the end of their MWJ rainbow. Rich neobarbs. But still neobarbs. Neanderthals with a centicredit.

It is quite difficult to impart institutional arrogance.

PLUS! What superpower, which reigned supreme for centuries, wouldn't suffer complete and utter insane denial of being toppled from the TOP DOG spot?

Would Americans have an easy time finding out that not only are we not the top dogs in the hunt anymore, but that we are no longer even in the hunt? And get this, the new TOP DOG is lil' ole Panama, because it just so happens it sits on a Canal that shortens trade routes.

We have people in Botswana who look into those things. And Panama. And pretty much everywhere else. And the Russians and Chinese do as well. And quite a few others.

Panama is hardly top dog. Noriega found that out the hard way.

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:The Solarian League leaders also suffer from delusions of grandeur, tripped up even further by a military that is built on patronage and not on accomplishment. The military leaders know full-well that they may not be able to rely on the incompetent "John Doe" -- whose family name, ONLY, is responsible for him even being in the navy -- to correctly deduce what he actually saw in some godforsaken sector and emerge on the right side of reality. In fact, it would be easier for Solarians to believe that God destroyed their ships than the wickedly simple and diminutive system of neobarbs to the West. To Solarians, Manticorans aren't just neobarbs, they are small, insignificant neobarbs. Who simply happen to be sitting in a golden pot at the end of their MWJ rainbow. Rich neobarbs. But still neobarbs. Neanderthals with a centicredit.

It is quite difficult to impart institutional arrogance.

PLUS! What superpower, which reigned supreme for centuries, wouldn't suffer complete and utter insane denial of being toppled from the TOP DOG spot?

Would Americans have an easy time finding out that not only are we not the top dogs in the hunt anymore, but that we are no longer even in the hunt? And get this, the new TOP DOG is lil' ole Panama, because it just so happens it sits on a Canal that shortens trade routes.

ldwechsler wrote:We have people in Botswana who look into those things. And Panama. And pretty much everywhere else. And the Russians and Chinese do as well. And quite a few others.

Panama is hardly top dog. Noriega found that out the hard way.

LOL

No they aren't TOP DOG, and your patriotism is already being riled, just like the Solarians. But what if they became TOP DOG, simply because of their location and gift of a canal? Would, indeed could, Americans accept it any easier than the Solarians?

It is a big mistake to assume that because a small number of people within an organization know (or suspect) something, that the organization as a whole would actually be able to act as if it knew that thing.

A specific case in point. In the summer of 1990, the overwhelming consensus of US intelligence analysts was that Saddam Hussein would not invade Kuwait. There was a small group at the CIA and DoD that was convinced otherwise, but they were unable to get a fair hearing until hours before the tanks were rolling.

To expand on my earlier example, if a US military attache in Chile forwarded reports that the Chilean Air Force had an aircraft that could fly at Mach 30, with a 20,000 km range, and could take off and land vertically I very much doubt that report would be given much credence in Washington DC.