Remaining holes in SLN intel

Ahem, of the two major operational branches, Battle Fleet is the senior, Rajani was CO BF before he was CNO, by all appearances.
Given that Battle Fleet First Families members make rank faster, Kingsford is probably also the most senior by date of rank of those in the list of officers with the qualifications to be considered for CNO.
if Kingsford does not take the position then the next logical successor is the CO FF, who has clean hands, over this issue, in a more than bureaucratic sense, Byng was appointed over her protests, and, Crandell was BF and her exercises was outside the OFS and probably FF info loop, and everything else has been decided by Rajani, Kingsford, Thimar, and the head of the strategy board, whose name escapes me at this point.
Even if there is bureaucratic cover, militaries tend to have charges, particularly for officers, that boil down conduct unbecoming or generalized wrongdoing. In fact, it half surprised me that the quintet did not simply substitute Kingsford for Rajani after Rajani died.

As to how important Ranjani should have been, you have to remember the SLN is the largest expense center, and in a realistic model of how the League works, is its second important function (after regulating the interstellar banking system which is a comparatively tiny amount of cash since the system is mostly privatized, except for depository insurance, which not only has its own direct revenue stream but first call on the League's general fund, and what should be massive warchest gather over centuries).

cthia wrote:Thanks. I suppose Kingsford himself was simply being modest...

ART Ch. 31 wrote:“Please, sit down, Fleet Admiral,” he said, and watched Kingsford seat himself. Once the naval officer had settled, Kolokoltsov sat back down himself and cocked his head. “I understand you’re Admiral Rajampet’s proper successor?”
“I was next in seniority, and that makes me the acting CNO, Sir,” Kingsford replied. “Filling the post on a permanent basis is a bit more complicated.

Bold and underline, mine.

Which is the formality, I suppose, brought up.

munroburton wrote:There are two kinds of seniority. The first is 'time in grade', where the 4 star Admiral who has been one for 10 years is senior to the 4 star Admiral who has been one for 5 years.

The second is seniority due to appointed position. For example, in the RMN, if Caparelli had a heart attack - Patricia Givens becomes the acting First Space Lord, despite "only" being a Vice Admiral, until such time as a formal replacement is confirmed.

Neither form of seniority should be the litmus test at the end of the meter stick measuring for the position. Especially in a system where favoritism and nepotism are passed out like party favors at a gala.

Btw, thanks. I did overlook the other form. If overlook is the right word since I really didn't know it existed.

munroburton wrote:There are two kinds of seniority. The first is 'time in grade', where the 4 star Admiral who has been one for 10 years is senior to the 4 star Admiral who has been one for 5 years.

Nope. Don't like that at all. That means Honor can lose out on a position of which she is most likely more qualified, because she only had 'time in grade' of 1 year as opposed to 10.

Theemile wrote:It's important to note that Filarta was not wrong. Crandall had run into s pile of system defense pods. He was wrong in that the Cruisers were the firecontrol for said system.

But he was right in that whatever it was which was used on Crandall wasn't portable. Sag-Cs can only carry 40 pods before their accel starts to degrade, so 12 Sag-Cs can only invade a system with a single salvo of 4800 missiles, then another follow-up with 1440 missiles every 54 seconds.

I thought what Crandall ran into was a load of SD pods, not system defense pods.

cthia wrote:There is a hOle that is so glaring that no one has bothered to mention it. The SL still hasn't come to terms with the fact that there is an invisible player at the high stakes poker game.

What I don't understand about the whole thing, is who do they think is responsible for the Yawata Strike? Haven didn't do it. The SLN knows that they didn't do it. So why is it so hard for them to fathom that there SIMPLY MUST BE some other player? Then, one has to wonder if they'd experience the same degree of anger at the realization of being used and cajoled as Haven and Manticore did?

Even Gweon can't hide that obvious fact.

They don't really care. The more immediate problem is to restore the impression of invincibility of battle fleet so the verge doesn't up and leave. Once that is done then they'll worry about who the hidden player is.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Theemile wrote:It's important to note that Filarta was not wrong. Crandall had run into s pile of system defense pods. He was wrong in that the Cruisers were the firecontrol for said system.

But he was right in that whatever it was which was used on Crandall wasn't portable. Sag-Cs can only carry 40 pods before their accel starts to degrade, so 12 Sag-Cs can only invade a system with a single salvo of 4800 missiles, then another follow-up with 1440 missiles every 54 seconds.

I thought what Crandall ran into was a load of SD pods, not system defense pods.

cthia wrote:There is a hOle that is so glaring that no one has bothered to mention it. The SL still hasn't come to terms with the fact that there is an invisible player at the high stakes poker game.

What I don't understand about the whole thing, is who do they think is responsible for the Yawata Strike? Haven didn't do it. The SLN knows that they didn't do it. So why is it so hard for them to fathom that there SIMPLY MUST BE some other player? Then, one has to wonder if they'd experience the same degree of anger at the realization of being used and cajoled as Haven and Manticore did?

Even Gweon can't hide that obvious fact.

They don't really care. The more immediate problem is to restore the impression of invincibility of battle fleet so the verge doesn't up and leave. Once that is done then they'll worry about who the hidden player is.

Indeed.

Yet, IMHO, the idiocy in that is unless they are certain this third player won't be headed for Solarian space to do the same thing...

And the reason they should be wary of the possibility is because the Manties flat out told them that they are puppets at the end of a string dancing to a pied piper. And the neobarbs are so vested in the belief that they ended their very brutal very long war, and Beth removed her hate that was stuffed and mounted on the wall for decades and buried it in a pine box.

I wonder if Solarian intel even know the measure of the Star Kingdom and Beth's hate? Scratch that. She had never told anyone. But then it shouldn't be necessarily excluded as knowledge from SL ONI because of Beth holding it near her breast.

cthia wrote:

munroburton wrote:There are two kinds of seniority. The first is 'time in grade', where the 4 star Admiral who has been one for 10 years is senior to the 4 star Admiral who has been one for 5 years.

Nope. Don't like that at all. That means Honor can lose out on a position of which she is most likely more qualified, because she only had 'time in grade' of 1 year as opposed to 10.

They don't seem to do it that way. After all, Honor got a full fleet. There are not that many fleets and there are probably more admirals with seniority to her.

Seniority matters in some things...discipline for example. And we saw the problem with Young's refusal to obey Honor's orders in Short Victorious War.

But note that she was in a more important position than Young despite his having seniority in rank over her.

Also, pre-war. admirals were shifted around.

At the current time, Honor is the only five star admiral because she had Home Fleet.

Seniority is not all that simple.

[quote="cthia"
Indeed.

Yet, IMHO, the idiocy in that is unless they are certain this third player won't be headed for Solarian space to do the same thing...

And the reason they should be wary of the possibility is because the Manties flat out told them that they are puppets at the end of a string dancing to a pied piper. And the neobarbs are so vested in the belief that they ended their very brutal very long war, and Beth removed her hate that was stuffed and mounted on the wall for decades and buried it in a pine box.

I wonder if Solarian intel even know the measure of the Star Kingdom and Beth's hate? Scratch that. She had never told anyone. But then it shouldn't be necessarily excluded as knowledge from SL ONI because of Beth holding it near her breast.[/quote]

I think it is a combination of things. A lot of them have to do with complacence of the League. The neobarbs fight among themselves and it means little. It's easy to caricature people like Elizabeth. She hated Haven and had good reason (knowing that they killed her father and her uncle and tried to kill her) but she moved her ideas very quickly.

And, of course, Sollie Naval Intelligence was being manipulated. They should have wondered who did the job and they never did...or at least not in a serious way.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:The real question to me is why did Kingsford take the job?

He has to know after Filareta that the war he has inherited is going to be far and away the ugliest war the League has ever fought. He has to know that as CNO that even if he manages to win that war he is going to be blamed for how ugly it is likely to be. For that matter the whole top tier of Battle Fleet is likely to be replaced, one way or the other, before the war is over.

And that is ignoring that unless he is completely brain dead, he has to at least suspect that there is another player on the board that he hasn't identified yet.

So the smart thing to do would be to take early retirement and either have a comfortable sinecure on a beach somewhere or be a consultant for a defense contractor.

Because he, like most SLN officers, is in fact a believer in the SL.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Hegemon wrote:Somewhat off-topic:
I want to discuss about the real hole in SLN collective intelligence: why no Admiral had enough sense to see plainly that the Solarian League was ripe for a military coup and to seize the opportunity with both hands. What I mean is that if the Solarian public accepted for centuries to be ruled by unelected bureaucrats, it would hardly bat an eyelid to be ruled by another group of unelected bureaucrats, this time the ones commanding SDs and BCs. After all, this is what SLN Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet are: two additional bureaucracies to the five main ones, but with all the real firepower.

At the current point in the books* the coup would fail because the SLN is NOT even the top dog in the Solarian League. They've fallen behind a number SDFs.

Yes, the Mandarins seem to be "top dogs" but this is not borned out by the real balance of power. My whole point was to ask why the CNO did not have the revelation that the "top dogs" have no real power base and can be easily overthrown.

I do not remember any SDF with anywhere near 2000 SDs like SLN Battle Fleet. Even Beowulf SDF (one of the wealthiest and most populous systems) only has 36 SDs.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Even if that wasn't the case the Navy doesn't have any ship building capability of its own as far as I can tell. Its not a self-maintaining organization. So you'd need to use the iron fist to get systems to dispense functional, non-trapped ships. Except Battle Fleet has zero experience with doing that, or even anything approaching it.

You don't need to build ships in a hurry when you already have 2000 SDs in commission and 300 SDs in refit and repair and nobody else has even 100 SDs.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Frontier Fleet has a little experience with ruling via the iron fist, but they're used to using puppets and much less developed planets. So they might have the skill base to try it, but they have no incentive to work with the jackasses over in Battle Fleet. Why help Battle Fleet with its coup, when they could do the same in their own little areas? As is being done in the Maya sector.

Frontier Fleet can't perform the coup on their own. They don't have anything larger than a battlecruiser, so they have no way to stop Battle Fleet from dusting all their bases. I mean, they could try putting battlecruisers up against all those dreadnoughts, but I don't think it would work.

*Minus the GA. Assume they get suddenly wiped out by say... aliens making a hyperspace bypass. They didn't realize the Haven Sector was inhabited. The aliens are really sorry.

You are right that Frontier Fleet is too far away and too weak to stage a coup on its own. The possible military coup I was discussing would be staged by Battle Fleet against the capital of Old Chicago.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Hegemon wrote:This idea stuck me when I re-read the 2016 revised edition of Edward N. Luttwak's classic "Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook" He defines three preconditions for a military coup to be practicable: a) the political participation must be confined to a small fraction of the population; b) the target state must be substantially independent; c) the target state must have a political center, or, if there are several centers, these must be identifiable, and they must be politically, rather than ethnically, structured. The Solarian League meets all the three conditions !

The Solarian League is actually missing "a" and "c". The political participation is widely distributed, and the political centers are widely distributed. While at a Federal Level its concentrated, the Federal Level isn't really important.

I would argue that both "a" and "c" are true for the federal SL government To quote from my post:

Hegemon wrote:Think about it: who really supports the Quintet (Kolokoltsov & co):
- The five bureaucracies they lead (including the OFS satraps);
- Some corrupt transstellars;
- Most of the Assembly;
- Many newsies.
- Bueller, Bueller ...

Nobody else would bat an eyelid if the Battle Fleet unelected bureauctats forcibly took control over five other unelected and unpopular bureauctacies.
As for "c": the center of power of the five SL federal bureauctacies is Sol System and Old Chicago. One center.

quite possibly a cat wrote:
Now what we DO have is Frontier Fleet governors and planetary governments looking to conquer their own little empire. We've seen an example in the Maya sector in the book, and we've heard references to the later in an info dump. So the real question is why hasn't the Solarian League exploded? Answer: Its about too.

drothgery wrote:2. The Mandarins are not his nominal civilian superiors; the nominal SecDef and elected officials are. They control beuracracies that are larger and more important to the League, and so can effectively make Rajani's political superiors issue him orders, but have no direct command authority over him.

Yes, exactly. And if the Mandarins can manipulate their nominal civilian superiors, my whole point on (soft or harsh) military coups was: why hasn't Rajani (or a previous CNO) cajoled, bribed or threatened his nominal civilian superior (the Minister of Defence) into becoming his lapdog like the other Mandarins have with their superiors. Unlike the civilian bureaucrats, the SLN is rich enough to bribe anybody and also has 2000 SDs in comission, aka "the final argument of kings" to use against anybody who doesn't toe the line.