[SPOILERS] Now that the war is over . . .

cthia wrote:If they did, which ships would likely enjoy the longest life of usefulness, a less chance of becoming obsolete?

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:If they did, which ships would likely enjoy the longest life of usefulness, a less chance of becoming obsolete?

Pod-naughts.

To upgrade a pod-naught's armament, you change the load-out in the pods. If it has Keyhole (I or II) you replace the Keyhole electronics with something improved, but can interface with the on-board electronics.

As long as the flat-pack pod specifications remain standardized, a pod-naught will remain at least semi-competitive.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:If they did, which ships would likely enjoy the longest life of usefulness, a less chance of becoming obsolete?

Pod-naughts.

To upgrade a pod-naught's armament, you change the load-out in the pods. If it has Keyhole (I or II) you replace the Keyhole electronics with something improved, but can interface with the on-board electronics.

As long as the flat-pack pod specifications remain standardized, a pod-naught will remain at least semi-competitive.

runsforcelery wrote:It is certainly true that so long as missile combat dominates, the existing podnoughts will be very easy to upgrade and update, compared to any earlier generation of wallers. And the GA's ships are already operating with about the most economic manpower possible. That's not to say that newer, more modern designs may not head off in other directions, but one of the outstanding characteristics of wet-navy battleships was always their ability to be upgraded and remain effective units over very long periods of time. The use of missile pods as opposed to "big gun" armament makes that much more the case for an SD(P), so expect those "legacy platforms" to be very much of any post-war GA fleet for a long time to come.

In many ways, this is really more like the post-WWII carfrier fleet. The older ships were retired and replaced in no small part because they lacked the hanger height to handle the latest generations of bigger, more powerful carrier aircraft. Aside from that, they remained highly effective platforms because of the way their "main batteries" could be almost indefinitely upgraded. So long as the latest generations of missiles can be fitted into pods that can be mated to an SD(P)'s rails, it will remain a front-line asset.

runsforcelery wrote:I will say only that most of the average citizens of the SL won't have any particular bone to pick with the GA once the true history of the war comes out and the new constitution has time to settle in. There will be individual star systems --- especially the Sol System, itself --- which will obviously feel very aggrieved. "Hey! Just because the SLN killed fifty or sixty million of your citizens and did trillions of credits of damage to completely neutral systems, that was no reason to come bust up our stuff! We didn't do nuffin to youse guys! It was them nasty old Mandarins, so why you wanna go and pick on us? Meanies! An' we're gonna get even, too --- so there!" The fact that Honor didn't kill one single person (civilian or military)in her entire incursion into the Sol System won't mean a solitary damn to them any more than it would to any other entitled bunch of people.

cthia wrote:Meant to ask before but ended up on an unplanned vacation. . .

One concept the League gave the galaxy is the idea of a mothballed fleet. Is it too much to consider the SEM slowly putting warships in a savings account? The League did it. Haven did it.*

If they did, which ships would likely enjoy the longest life of usefulness, a less chance of becoming obsolete? Also, if the SEM were to consider the option, where would such a fleet be kept?

Now I know there must be a build down, but there should still be a few dollars leftover to slowly feed the bank.

A mothballed fleet wouldn't be nearly as costly, and available in a pinch if some entity tries to get bullish, or gorillarish, on your market.

Is the BC the most enduring design?

quite possibly a cat wrote:So I'm still confused about what Honor did exactly destroy. It was everything "Deep Space", but what is Deep Space exactly? Is Ceres deep space? Did she trash habitats around Jupiter? I can't imagine she would have been able to trash many habitats without someone doing something stupid; getting 100% evacuations is basically impossible in any sort of large settlement.

Or did she just destroy government and military property? That would mean she isn't a vile war criminal. Destruction of private property is a no-no. (Unless required by war, which is obviously wasn't since they were surrendering.)

Although I very strongly suspect that Sol will come out of this ahead in their overall economics. Just think of it as mandatory good economic policy.

Also where the heck was the Sol government this entire time? Why didn't they just quit the League before or as soon as Honor showed up? "Hi! We quit the League. On an unrelated note, I think its clear not-MAD has failed. Everyone get out." Also are those random murders that our plucky Solarian League heroes carried out going to be prosecuted? (By triggering Nano-weapons no less!)

runsforcelery wrote:I will say only that most of the average citizens of the SL won't have any particular bone to pick with the GA once the true history of the war comes out and the new constitution has time to settle in. There will be individual star systems --- especially the Sol System, itself --- which will obviously feel very aggrieved. "Hey! Just because the SLN killed fifty or sixty million of your citizens and did trillions of credits of damage to completely neutral systems, that was no reason to come bust up our stuff! We didn't do nuffin to youse guys! It was them nasty old Mandarins, so why you wanna go and pick on us? Meanies! An' we're gonna get even, too --- so there!" The fact that Honor didn't kill one single person (civilian or military)in her entire incursion into the Sol System won't mean a solitary damn to them any more than it would to any other entitled bunch of people.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cou_us_rule50I assume the true history of the war, doesn't involve revealing any involvement with the Green Pines massacre? And don't they need to clear up the whole Mesa mess somehow? I mean, with the new Constitution being allowed to have anything, why not just sanction Manticore and Haven's economies as much as possible. Sure, it will cost them use of the wormholes, but surely they can make sacrifices to prevent future incidences of mass nuking?

P.S. I should go to bed. Sorry if I rambled too much.

quite possibly a cat wrote:So I'm still confused about what Honor did exactly destroy. It was everything "Deep Space", but what is Deep Space exactly? Is Ceres deep space? Did she trash habitats around Jupiter? I can't imagine she would have been able to trash many habitats without someone doing something stupid; getting 100% evacuations is basically impossible in any sort of large settlement.

Or did she just destroy government and military property? That would mean she isn't a vile war criminal. Destruction of private property is a no-no. (Unless required by war, which is obviously wasn't since they were surrendering.)

Although I very strongly suspect that Sol will come out of this ahead in their overall economics. Just think of it as mandatory good economic policy.

Also where the heck was the Sol government this entire time? Why didn't they just quit the League before or as soon as Honor showed up? "Hi! We quit the League. On an unrelated note, I think its clear not-MAD has failed. Everyone get out." Also are those random murders that our plucky Solarian League heroes carried out going to be prosecuted? (By triggering Nano-weapons no less!)

runsforcelery wrote:I will say only that most of the average citizens of the SL won't have any particular bone to pick with the GA once the true history of the war comes out and the new constitution has time to settle in. There will be individual star systems --- especially the Sol System, itself --- which will obviously feel very aggrieved. "Hey! Just because the SLN killed fifty or sixty million of your citizens and did trillions of credits of damage to completely neutral systems, that was no reason to come bust up our stuff! We didn't do nuffin to youse guys! It was them nasty old Mandarins, so why you wanna go and pick on us? Meanies! An' we're gonna get even, too --- so there!" The fact that Honor didn't kill one single person (civilian or military)in her entire incursion into the Sol System won't mean a solitary damn to them any more than it would to any other entitled bunch of people.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cou_us_rule50I assume the true history of the war, doesn't involve revealing any involvement with the Green Pines massacre? And don't they need to clear up the whole Mesa mess somehow? I mean, with the new Constitution being allowed to have anything, why not just sanction Manticore and Haven's economies as much as possible. Sure, it will cost them use of the wormholes, but surely they can make sacrifices to prevent future incidences of mass nuking?

P.S. I should go to bed. Sorry if I rambled too much.

runsforcelery wrote:Deep space is everything in the entire star system outside the atmosphere of a planet aside from orbital habitats and power satellites. All of it. And they weren't surrendering when she did it. Kingsford surrendered after she pressed the button and delivered her terms. Prior to that, they didn't know what she was going to demand, and she damned well wasn't going to tell them until she'd made her point about how unwise it would be to not accept whatever she ended up requiring from them. And at that point, neither she nor anyone else in the GA felt any particular compunction about taking out private property, especially since they weren't killing a single civilian in the process. Indeed, that was an essential part of their entire strategy. The core systems didn't really care what was happening in the Haven Sector because of their sublime assurance that no one could possibly hurt them. And if anyone was getting killed, it was those folks in uniform who'd agreed to run the risk of being killed. Nemesis was designed to force the SL's civilian citizens to wake up and do something about the unmitigated CF they had permitted the Mandarins and their predecessors to create.

"The Solarian League is like a hog. You must kick it in the nose occasionally to get it's attention."

Honor did.

On another front, the whole Green Pines thing does, indeed, represent a case of . . . moral ambiguity for the GA. They can legitimately argue they never set off any nukes that inflicted mass casualties --- especially the one that took out the base hidden under the tower --- just as they can argue that the Seccies on-planet stole the nukes. Anton and Victor didn't bring them along in their luggage, they didn't target the park, and they never intended to precipitate or enable a mass casualty event. But they did hack the software on the nukes and they did know their allies weren't all all that that tightly wrapped, so even if they didn't aim the rifle or squeeze the trigger, they damned well loaded it.

To be honest, I was very uncomfortable when Eric handed the nukes over, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided that was a good thing, not a bad one. It does create a moral quandary and at this point, I haven't really decided whether or not Honor knows what really happened on what was, after all, a highly classified op. So where do we go with that? Darned if I know, but solving problems is part of what makes for good story telling.

As for the rest of your points, the book already runs to almost 800 pages, without any character lists or indexes! Trust me, I had to do some picking and choosing to decide what I could fit into it without making it even bigger, and I wanted this one to read pretty fast and lean. I may or may not resolve some of those other questions for you. Depends on where I go and what I write. At the moment, I'm inclining towards working on some more of the backstory I've never had an opportunity to tell, like the story of Alfred Harrington's Marine service.

After that, we'll see what happens!

runsforcelery wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
Pod-naughts.

To upgrade a pod-naught's armament, you change the load-out in the pods. If it has Keyhole (I or II) you replace the Keyhole electronics with something improved, but can interface with the on-board electronics.

As long as the flat-pack pod specifications remain standardized, a pod-naught will remain at least semi-competitive.

It is certainly true that so long as missile combat dominates, the existing podnoughts will be very easy to upgrade and update, compared to any earlier generation of wallers. And the GA's ships are already operating with about the most economic manpower possible. That's not to say that newer, more modern designs may not head off in other directions, but one of the outstanding characteristics of wet-navy battleships was always their ability to be upgraded and remain effective units over very long periods of time. The use of missile pods as opposed to "big gun" armament makes that much more the case for an SD(P), so expect those "legacy platforms" to be very much of any post-war GA fleet for a long time to come.

In many ways, this is really more like the post-WWII carfrier fleet. The older ships were retired and replaced in no small part because they lacked the hanger height to handle the latest generations of bigger, more powerful carrier aircraft. Aside from that, they remained highly effective platforms because of the way their "main batteries" could be almost indefinitely upgraded. So long as the latest generations of missiles can be fitted into pods that can be mated to an SD(P)'s rails, it will remain a front-line asset.

cthia wrote:

Dauntless wrote:not building as many as you have been is not quite the same as a build down, i don't think. it is just accepting that the need is no longer as high as it was.

as I said they will replace the pre- Apollo SD(P), and a Apollo capable is worth at least 2 pre Apollo SD(p) which alone was worth 5, i think, non pod SDs, either via outright new ships or upgrading the current ones to Apollo level.

RFC has always tried to stay away from exact numbers but say they were commissioning 50 SD(P) a year before they lost the stations, and now the fighting is over they cut that to 25. that is still a significant chunk given that less then 50 systems galaxy wide have any, and of them less then 20 have more then a squadron. is it less then it was? yes but unfortunately when all you have point at are vague shadows, even ones who did as much damage as they did it is not possible to keep spending the way you were when you actively losing SDs every couple of weeks.

the kingdom is now an empire and will have a need for bigger fleets. probably a home fleet for each of the 3 territories, old SKM, Quadrant and Silesa. so they aren't cancelling all pod SD construction. just cutting back and building up the smaller units that have been lower priority for most of the last 4 decades

Elizabeth will make sure the RMN R&D continues to push the limits and no-one is forgetting that the Malign is still out their but the war for now has shifted.

with no exact location to attack it has become a cold war, the war of spies really. as our history shows us, a cold war does not mean no new ships, or tech. it just means that thing aren't being done at breakneck speed.

the cost of the Yawtta strike will not be forgotten soon, not by QE3 or the RMN. much like 70 years on and despite some people attempts the Holocaust is not forgotten and fingers crossed won't be anytime soon.

it wasn't the tech that was tracked, it was the Hyper arrival, but fingers crossed they will have some ideas for tracking spider ships by the time the next series starts. yes they might be able to transition further out to try and avoid detection but there are limits on how far out you can arrive and still be able to do the mission. the arrays are likely being upgraded against that very idea as well.

but even with standard tech that is a risk. Scotty Tremine did something similar during Buttercup, where several LAC groups were dropped off well out of hyper detection range and came in ballistic. there is no such thing as perfect security. you do what you can, but there comes a point when you simply have to accept you've done what can be done and move on.

Thanks again, and a very well laid out post. It certainly all makes sense to me. In time of peace, there's no need to strain the coffers trying to keep up with the Peeps-es. Besides, how much longer could the war between the Peeps and the Manties have lasted before the bank was broken anyway?

However, I still think whatever agreement is reached between Beth and Eloise should include provisions for even parity of warships. Why does the whole thing remind me of the Cold War and the agreement to draw down nuclear weapons between the two Superpowers?

As I've stated upstream. Failure on Manticore's part to do so would be equivalent to criminal negligence.

I still think the MA should target Pritchart and Theisman. If successful, the alliance is dead in one fell swoop.

One things for certain, if the Peeps flip on Beth again, she's gonna need therapy.

runsforceledy wrote:Okay, since spoilers have already crept into the thread (I think the thread name should probably be sufficient warning for people who don't like them), allow me to point out a view things. I'm sort of free associating here, so my points probably aren't going to be in any special order.

(1) At the moment, the Grand Alliance has the only modern wall of battle in the galaxy. It has literally hundreds of SD(P)s and scores of CLACs. The only bigger navy in the galaxy has been pretty completely destroyed. Frontier Fleet still exists, but the biggest and nastiest ships it has are totally obsolete battlecruisers. The Battle Fleet Reserve is suitable for nothing but scrap. The same is true of every active Solarian ship-of-the-wall as of the end of the war.

(2) The galaxy just got a whole lot less predictable. Sort of like happens when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated and the Soviet Union turned into the Russian Federation, the balance of power which had been a fundamental part of interstellar diplomatic and commercial calculations has gone belly up. The Solarian League is still the biggest kid on the block; but the Solarian League no longer controls the Protectorates, and it won't be controlling the Protectorates again. It's going to start shedding systems in the Shell, too, I assure you. So there are going to be whole bunch is of independent star systems, each with its own set of political and economic objectives, and each worried about people trying to prey upon it militarily and/or looking around for someone it can prey upon. In essence, the entire Fringe has just become Silesia, in a lot of respects.

(3) I don't recall anyone saying that bonded cargo carriers didn't forfeit their bonds when Manticore called them home under Lacoön. In fact, they did, which is one reason they took such an economic hit. So although there are going to be a lot of disgruntled Solarian ship owners, none of them who were dealing with bonded carriers (which is pretty much everyone when you're talking about cargoes in the millions of tons) is currently uncompensated. If cargoes simply weren't picked up, then there are penalties built into the contracts, and those may be a case for litigation after the war if the Manticoran carrier is going to argue that it was an act of war before the war was actively declared. It's going to be awful hard to get any interstellar admiralty court to say that it wasn't during "time of war" given the Solarian League's unilateral military actions, however.

(4) The Star Empire of Manticore most certainly is not going to start hiking the Junction transit fees. First, that would be really, really bad from a political perspective. By leaving the fee schedules where they were prewar for Solarian shipping, they demonstrate a restraint that any thinking Solarian knows perfectly well OFS wouldn't have demonstrated if it had succeeded in taking over the Junction. Second, the revenue stream being generated by the Junction, especially with Talbott added to the equation and the high probability of mutual defense/usage treaties with several of the newly independent star systems who happen to have wormhole termini in their stellar backyards, is enormous. It always has been, which is the main reason the Star Empire's taxes were so low. They do have a lot of debt to pay down, especially after the damages of Oyster Bay, however they've already more than paid their way with their allies in the form of the new tech they've made available. I am sure that Elizabeth, who has very good diplomatic smarts when she isn't hating on a star nation that, oh, murdered her father, her uncle, her cousin, her prime minister, etc., is well aware of the need to not "sponge off" Haven, and of her obligations to Grayson, and she will most definitely meet them.

(5) Given that there is no longer any conceivable credible military threat (aside from the possibility of "stealth attacks") that the Grand Alliance — or, for that matter, the Star Empire or Haven, acting in isolation — couldn't swat like a bug, and that there is going to be a lot of proto-Silesia space out there, nobody in the universe understands better than Manticore that the force mix it was forced to build in a war for its existence is not the one that it's going to need in the postwar period. It's going to need more cruising vessels, it's going to need more light squadrons, etc., and it's going to need a lot less wallers. So that's the fleet mix it's going to reach for. That doesn't mean it won't have a wall of battle; it simply means that the wall of battle it will have will be ample to deal with any known threat while the emphasis on new construction is going to be focused on actual post war needs, not postwar paranoid "wish lists." If anyone thinks that Manticoran intelligence organizations are going to go to sleep and not keep a real, real, real close eye on potential emerging threats, I have a bridge I want to sell you. And if anyone thinks that queen Elizabeth (or, for that matter, if anything happened to her, Crown prince Roger) isn't going to be thinking in terms of safety margins against known or emerging threats (you do remember what King Roger's response to an "emerging threat" was, I trust?), I have some bottomland I want to sell you. Just don't ask me which ocean it's on the bottom of. So, yes, the RMN is going to be "building down" at least in terms of capital ships, but it is most definitely not going to go to sleep at the switch.

(6) Speaking of watching out for emerging threats, I trust that no one thinks that Elizabeth or Eloise Pritchart are going to simply forget about the Alignment? There's no point in building a mammoth fleet that you can't point at your enemy, and the Grand Alliance recognizes that — as Hamish Alexander pointed out to Elizabeth in the immediate aftermath of Oyster Bay — that whatever else the Alignment may be and have, at this time it clearly doesn't have a massive fleet of stealth vessels. If it had had them at the time of Oyster Bay, then Oyster Bay would've been launched in greater strength. If it had them as of Operation Nemesis, it wouldn't have had to count on getting bombs aboard the Beowulf habitats. And I promise that the Four Musketeers are going to go right on looking very hard with all of the support that both Eloise and Elizabeth can provide.

(7) One reason that the RMN and the PRN and the GSN aren't going to be building bunches of new capital ships anytime real soon is that Tom Theisman's "congress of geeks" in Bolthole is going to be busy synthesizing current level Alliance technology with all the goodies honor brought home from Naval Station Ganymede. I believe that one may safely assume that new and much improved iterations of current technology — and possibly even some new departures — will emerge from that. Certainly, the Grand Alliance is expecting there to be changes, which is one reason they're going to be cautious about buying additional current-generation platforms. They've got oodles of legacy platforms; if new stuff becomes available, then they need to be building new platforms optimized to use it. They don't need to have built a bunch of platforms that are poorly suited to the new stuff.

(8) Someone mentioned that the Alignment should be working on assassinating Elizabeth and/or Eloise. Excuse me a moment. D'oh! I assure you, that the Alignment is thinking about it and looking for ways to do it and Palace Security, the Empress's Own, the Protector's Guard, and a whole passel of treecats are looking for ways to prevent it. Unless the Alignment wants to come out into the open with something like a big, nasty bomb — or yet another "stealth fleet" attack — then going to have to work through what you might call "normal" channels, although their nanotech gives them a few abnormal advantages. On the other hand, there are the treecats. And if they do use a big, nasty bomb or another "stealth fleet" attack, then they are going to underline, punctuate, and italicize the fact that there really is an "Alignment" out there, whether the Manties and Havenites have correctly identified it or not. From the Alignment's perspective, this would be A Bad Thing™, and they already had a rather pointed lesson in letting emotional pain dictate strategic decisions in the form of Operation Nemesis.

(9) Apropos Operation Nemesis. Some people have been saying that, in effect, the Grand Alliance did exactly what the Alignment wanted to accomplish. The truth is, however, that it both did and it didn't, with emphasis on the latter. Yes, there are going to be a lot of opportunities in the Fringe and the Shell that can be picked up on by someone like the Renaissance Factor, and that's a good thing from the Alignment's perspective. However, the Solarian League will still be in existence and really 90% or more intact in terms of population and probably 85% intact in terms of economic muscle, which means that the possibility of executing a hostile takeover against the League's fragmented remains is not very high. I'm not saying that the Alignment's objectives have gone totally unmet; I'm saying that what happened wasn't the outcome they really wanted. Please note also that I'm not saying that the outcome they got wasn't one that their models hadn't predicted as at least one possible outcome, so I think you can assume that they have plans in place to proceed from where they are now.

(10) About the notion of "parity" between the Royal Manticoran Navy and the Peoples Navy. People, the RMN already has parity with the RHN. And the RHN is going to be much more drastically downsized than the RMN, proportionately, for a lot of reasons. Including the fact that both Eloise Pritchart and Thomas Theisman recognize that while the RMN has been respected and trusted by the majority of the galaxy for the last two or three centuries, the RHN, as the inheritor of the Peoples Navy has a much less savory reputation. So, like the RMN, the RHN is going to be building ships intended for police service and being very careful not to build up a fleet which is obviously suitable for going a-conquering again, if someone with less of a moral sense than Eloise or Tom winds up in charge of it.

(11) The Star Empire of Manticore and its merchant marine is going to come out of the war against the Solarian League in very good shape. Yes, quite a few of the smaller shipping lines in Manticore will have gone belly up, despite government assistance, in the wake of Operation Lacoön and its fiscal consequences. The lines which survived — and probably quite a lot of new lines, started up with merchantships that can be snapped up cheap — are going to expand like crazy, however. All of the astrogational advantages the Star Kingdom has enjoyed ever since the Junction was opened are still there, and have been in fact multiplied by the additional influence that Manticore has acquired with the other hyper bridges of the galaxy. Manticore doesn't have to raise its transit fees vis-à-vis Solarian or independent shipping in order to enjoy those advantages, either. All it has to do is to discount transit fees for its own shipping and that of its allies and closest trade partners. The result is going to be to once again exert that financial pressure in favor of shipping in Manticore and bottoms because of what it means for your cargo's bottom line. And all of the factors which conspired to make Manticore the Zürich-New York-London on steroids of the Honorverse's financial networks will still be there, as well. Manticore may be way out on the fringe of the explored galaxy, but because of the Junction and the hyper bridges, it is still the logical — indeed, the inevitable — hub of major financial markets, and that is only going to increase with the number of unilateral and multilateral trading relationships/treaties which are going to come Manticore's way with the collapse of the Protectorates. It is probable that Manticore will not again acquire the completely dominating position that it once had in terms of the Solarian carrying trade, but the reason it won't is that the revamped League is going to subsidize its own merchant shipping in order to avoid that outcome. In the long-term, Manticore can probably afford to sit back and simply be patient about that, because eventually — and probably not all that far in the future — the immediate memories of Lacoön will begin to fade, the League's federal government will look for places it can cut spending, and the subsidy program will be wound down with the comfortable conclusion that the League has built up a sufficient backlog freighters to protect it against a similar strategy in the future. At which point, as the merchant marine inevitably continues to grow, Manticore's percentage of the total carrying trade will once again begin expanding vis-à-vis League-flagged carriers.

And I suppose that's enough to go on with for now.

Flag in Exile Ch. 15 wrote:He sipped more coffee and watched the light dots of impeller-drive freighters plying back and forth between Minette's two asteroid belts and Everest's orbital smelters. Minette's industry was unsophisticated, but the system was an important source of raw materials and heavy industrial products, and there'd been plans, once, to upgrade its defenses by adding a powerful shell of orbital fortresses around Everest itself. Like much else, however, that project had been overtaken by the war. Although it required massive fixed defenses to cover the repair and maintenance bases that supported the Fleet in wartime, they were only built during peacetime. Once the fighting actually started, they cost too much, for not even the Star Kingdom could afford to build everything.

It was remarkable that the prewar arms race hadn't wrecked the Manticoran economy, Stanton mused. Although it had been a boom for the armaments industry and done amazing things for applied research, the monetary cost had been staggering. Only the Star Kingdom's enormously productive industrial base and vast merchant marine, coupled with its control of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction, had given it the wealth to absorb such huge peacetime military budgets without major disruptions.

It was getting worse now that the war had actually begun. Taxes and toll fees on the Junction's merchant shipping had already been raised twice. No doubt they'd be going up yet again soon, and finding the trained manpower to simultaneously crew the Fleet and merchant marine and sustain the work force might become a problem, but things might have been far worse. No one else in the Peeps' path had possessed the capability to build a war machine that might stand up to them. Only Manticore had been able to do it . . . and even then only with the Liberal and Progressive Parties screaming like gelded hexapumas at "diverting" so many tax dollars into "alarmist, unproductive military hardware."

Well, Stanton thought grimly, only a thin shell of Peep bases still stood between Admiral White Haven's "unproductive military hardware" and Trevor's Star, the single nexus of the Manticore Junction controlled by the People's Republic, and on his way there, White Haven had decisively blunted the Peeps' overwhelming prewar advantage in ships of the wall. At the same time, Stanton admitted, the Peeps had yet to lose a truly vital system. White Haven's capture of Sun-Yat and its major shipyards had hurt them (and, ultimately, with proper technical upgrades, would no doubt help Manticore), but Sun-Yat's loss was only a flea bite against the military infrastructure they'd spent fifty years building. Which explained why the Alliance could no longer divert capacity to fortifying its rear areas. It had to concentrate on the ships to take the war to the Peeps. And, as certain elements of BuPlan often pointed out, those same starships would also be the most mobile and flexible means of responding to any counteroffensive the Peeps managed to launch.

Flag in Exile Ch. 15 wrote:He sipped more coffee and watched the light dots of impeller-drive freighters plying back and forth between Minette's two asteroid belts and Everest's orbital smelters. Minette's industry was unsophisticated, but the system was an important source of raw materials and heavy industrial products, and there'd been plans, once, to upgrade its defenses by adding a powerful shell of orbital fortresses around Everest itself. Like much else, however, that project had been overtaken by the war. Although it required massive fixed defenses to cover the repair and maintenance bases that supported the Fleet in wartime, they were only built during peacetime. Once the fighting actually started, they cost too much, for not even the Star Kingdom could afford to build everything.

It was remarkable that the prewar arms race hadn't wrecked the Manticoran economy, Stanton mused. Although it had been a boom for the armaments industry and done amazing things for applied research, the monetary cost had been staggering. Only the Star Kingdom's enormously productive industrial base and vast merchant marine, coupled with its control of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction, had given it the wealth to absorb such huge peacetime military budgets without major disruptions.

It was getting worse now that the war had actually begun. Taxes and toll fees on the Junction's merchant shipping had already been raised twice. No doubt they'd be going up yet again soon, and finding the trained manpower to simultaneously crew the Fleet and merchant marine and sustain the work force might become a problem, but things might have been far worse. No one else in the Peeps' path had possessed the capability to build a war machine that might stand up to them. Only Manticore had been able to do it . . . and even then only with the Liberal and Progressive Parties screaming like gelded hexapumas at "diverting" so many tax dollars into "alarmist, unproductive military hardware."

Well, Stanton thought grimly, only a thin shell of Peep bases still stood between Admiral White Haven's "unproductive military hardware" and Trevor's Star, the single nexus of the Manticore Junction controlled by the People's Republic, and on his way there, White Haven had decisively blunted the Peeps' overwhelming prewar advantage in ships of the wall. At the same time, Stanton admitted, the Peeps had yet to lose a truly vital system. White Haven's capture of Sun-Yat and its major shipyards had hurt them (and, ultimately, with proper technical upgrades, would no doubt help Manticore), but Sun-Yat's loss was only a flea bite against the military infrastructure they'd spent fifty years building. Which explained why the Alliance could no longer divert capacity to fortifying its rear areas. It had to concentrate on the ships to take the war to the Peeps. And, as certain elements of BuPlan often pointed out, those same starships would also be the most mobile and flexible means of responding to any counteroffensive the Peeps managed to launch.