Remaining holes in SLN intel

Brigade XO wrote:Nobody in the League has anything like the number of ships still remaining in active service to the SLN.
Beowelf has 36 SDs plus a fair amound of smaller ships (no, I don't recall how many) but I don't believe any SL member has more. None of the RF systems seem to have any SDs and while we have seen that Mannerheim has a credable fleet, it seems that it's largest ships are BCs.
(snip)

ART Ch. 31 wrote:“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. Ministry of Defense Taketomo needs to formally nominate someone for the position. Then, under the Constitution, the Assembly has to confirm the nomination.”

He actually said that with a straight face, Kolokoltsov observed. Ministry of Defense Taketomo Kunimichi was a complete nonentity in terms of real power. He’d nominate whoever Kolokoltsov and his colleagues suggested, and “Assembly confirmation” would follow with automatic precision.

“I see.” The permanent senior undersecretary of state smiled. “Given the fact that it’s been—what? Thirty-seven T-years?—since we last had to replace a chief of naval operations, everyone’s going to be a little rusty on the procedure, I suppose. I think we can assume your acting status will be confirmed and made permanent as soon as possible.”
“I appreciate that, Sir,” Kingsford said, then allowed himself a wry smile of his own. “Under the circumstances, I’m not sure it’s going to be a very enjoyable job, you understand.”

He actually said that with a straight face, Kolokoltsov observed. Ministry of Defense Taketomo Kunimichi was a complete nonentity in terms of real power. He’d nominate whoever Kolokoltsov and his colleagues suggested, and “Assembly confirmation” would follow with automatic precision.

cthia wrote:Something occurred to me, my pump being primed by Hegemon's notion of a coup.

It seems that the formalities of actually replacing Rajani, and or making Kingsford permanent, is a straw house of needing Taketomo to nominate him.

ART Ch. 31 wrote:“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. Ministry of Defense Taketomo needs to formally nominate someone for the position. Then, under the Constitution, the Assembly has to confirm the nomination.”

He actually said that with a straight face, Kolokoltsov observed. Ministry of Defense Taketomo Kunimichi was a complete nonentity in terms of real power. He’d nominate whoever Kolokoltsov and his colleagues suggested, and “Assembly confirmation” would follow with automatic precision.

“I see.” The permanent senior undersecretary of state smiled. “Given the fact that it’s been—what? Thirty-seven T-years?—since we last had to replace a chief of naval operations, everyone’s going to be a little rusty on the procedure, I suppose. I think we can assume your acting status will be confirmed and made permanent as soon as possible.”
“I appreciate that, Sir,” Kingsford said, then allowed himself a wry smile of his own. “Under the circumstances, I’m not sure it’s going to be a very enjoyable job, you understand.”

A straw house because...

He actually said that with a straight face, Kolokoltsov observed. Ministry of Defense Taketomo Kunimichi was a complete nonentity in terms of real power. He’d nominate whoever Kolokoltsov and his colleagues suggested, and “Assembly confirmation” would follow with automatic precision.

Why do coups have to be carried out in violence? Someone in the political system could get to Taketomo and discuss the need for an overhaul, a change from business as usual. A reconstituting of power. Someone in the system needs to grow a pair. What exactly can Kolokoltsov do, if Taketomo flat out refuses to nominate Kingsford or anyone else in Battle Fleet's chain of command? Seeing as though Battle Fleet hasn't got a working brain cell of an amoeba.


Is there anything other than traditional kowtowing to the Mandarins illegal political powerbase that says an appointment to the Quintet cannot come from Frontier Fleet or elsewhere? FF actually has the brains of an amoeba.

.

Hegemon wrote:
Sir, thank you, that is exactly my point !
Let's imagine a 'soft coup': if Battle Fleet can get the SL Defence Minister (and say SL Prime Minister) to tell the Mandarins to pound sand, what can the Mandarins do ? They cannot very well go public and accuse them of insubordonation !

Hegemon wrote:
Sir, thank you, that is exactly my point !
Let's imagine a 'soft coup': if Battle Fleet can get the SL Defence Minister (and say SL Prime Minister) to tell the Mandarins to pound sand, what can the Mandarins do ? They cannot very well go public and accuse them of insubordonation !

cthia wrote:Did SLN intel at least have an idea of the maximum number of RMN ships they could be facing before embarking on Operation Raging Justice? Which might indicate that someone was at least in the office of naval intel and not on the golf course 25/7.

Don't ask me how they manage to squeeze an extra hour out of a day to play golf.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:Did SLN intel at least have an idea of the maximum number of RMN ships they could be facing before embarking on Operation Raging Justice? Which might indicate that someone was at least in the office of naval intel and not on the golf course 25/7.

Don't ask me how they manage to squeeze an extra hour out of a day to play golf.

NO

According to their intel, Manticore's defenses were "hammered" by Oyster Bay and (earlier) Beatrice.

However asking any merchant would have found the intact status of the Junction defenses (aka, no difference to a passing observer with only passive reads and nav radar.)and the survival of the nav transponder of any fixed fortifications around the planet said merchant visited.

Not that a merchie's passives are anything to be celebrated, nor are nav transponders indicitative of anything real, but the normalacy of certain items a merchie on a regular schedule should have said volumes about what existed in Manticore space.

ldwechsler wrote:

It doesn't really matter much. The real players, MAlign and the Grand Alliance, want and expect the mandarins to give in. And they will give in to some degree. There will still be a Solarian League but it will be much smaller. It will also still be the largest entity in space.

So if there are only about 900 worlds in it (cut in half) it will still be huge.

cthia wrote:

Theemile wrote:According to their intel, Manticore's defenses were "hammered" by Oyster Bay and (earlier) Beatrice.

... At any rate, SL intel in that respect was either inadequate, nonexistent or pulled out of their ONIANUM.

Mission of Honor
Chapter Thirty-one wrote:"Assuming he manages to meet the specified movement schedule," he went on after a moment, "he should reach Manticore almost exactly three T-weeks from today. Although he's probably clever enough to have at least a few suspicions about how Crandall came to be placed where she was, which means he's probably cherishing a few second thoughts about his own relationship with Manpower, there's not much wiggle room in the orders Rajampet and the Security Board have cut for him. And it's clear from those orders that they've bought into the theory that Manticore's 'mysterious attackers' must have pretty thoroughly gutted the home system's defenses."

Profound satisfaction glittered in his eyes with the last sentence. Getting that particular "conclusion" into the SLN's thought processes had been simpler than he'd expected, although the latest reports from both Collin and Franklin indicated that was going to get harder in the next few months. Well, it wasn't as if that hadn't been anticipated all along. As the catastrophic scope of ONI's threat appreciation failures was driven home in gutted starships and dead spacers, even Solly admirals were bound to realize a thorough housecleaning of their intelligence services was in order. It would be interesting to see if the present senior officers at ONI and OpAn were publicly scapegoated or simply shuffled out to pasture, but it was inevitable that more competent successors (after all, there couldn't be any less competent successors) would replace them.