What is the |value| of captured enemy systems?

You'll have to pardon my ignorance. I'm trying to get a grip on similarities and dissimilarities in the Honorverse vs the present. Compounded by the fact that certain nomenclatures escape me even now. Such as the apparently difficult if not so straightforward question I posed over in the Rambling's thread . . . What comprises a Home Fleet in the Honorverse?

Certainly, my warped brain would think that a local planetary naval force of air breathers would be a far cry from a SDF and much cheaper to own and operate for an entire planet, even if said planet is relatively poor. What is stopping the planetary version of pirate outfits from pillaging industry and research facilities down on planet? The Havenites financed an expensive mission which involved smuggling technology down on Basilisk to wreak havoc. Other goals could have been accomplished with such an operation, such as stealing a planet's trade secrets. If this criminal activity comes from out of system is one thing, but criminal enterprises located on your own planet may not be so straightforward to locate and counterattack. A horde of miscreant personalities like Randy Steilman who has smuggled heavy weaponry like what happened in SoV can raid bank vaults, industrial trade secrets, etc.

It really seems off that a local planetary government doesn't have a battery of air breathers to immediately put down civil unrest or local "terrorism." It's almost inviting a well funded local criminal enterprise to raid its own planetary resources. Steal from the poor but richer-than-thee and flee. ::shrug 3::

I think almost all systems we've seen has had some kind of airbreathers for local issues. The revolutionaries either had to stay secret enough to get spotted or had enough anti-air capability to keep government flyers away.

now we are talking about different things.

also don't forget about the only core worlds we have ANY info on is Earth an Beowulf.

it is likely that just about all plants have something for planetary combat. they might be called law enforcement or might be called military but they undoubtedly exist to combat the groups that steal or murder etc outside of the cities.

but the heaviest unit these are likely to possess will be assault shuttles or pinnaces. with a bit of luck a assault shuttle destroyed an UNARMED dispatch boat which didn't even has it wedge up, and was hard pressed to do that.

there is also one other thing if you look in House of steel there is some talk about sting ships, a fairly broad term for the equivalent of a present day fighter with the ability to make orbit and do some limited fighting but again it isn't really going to be able to do much to a warship even one run by pirates.

and once the pirate owns the orbitals he can drop KEW where ever he wants and most people in that situation will pony up the money or let the pirates take what they want to avoid casualties in the millions

now the SDF might have some LACs for customs work but my analogy of florida was spot on, you said that it doesn't work because the USN is a phone call away and the SLN isn't. While you aren't wrong, the analogy perfectly summed up the mindset of the vast majority of SL words.

like all of us you are living in an age where you can talk to someone on the other side of the world within a minute of entering a phone number. the honorverse is as has long been discussed roughly based on how the world was back in the age of sail. A time when it was impossible to completely defend your territory from raids, be they by pirates or other nations.

back then reputation was the biggest deterrent. Sure you could raid a county. steal millions and be gone before they navy could stop you but the county would track you down and kill you and make a big show about it. what is the point in stealing millions if you aren't going to live long enough to spend it.

so as I said the florida analogy works perfectly, if you are in the age of sail.

so basically why do most Core worlds not have their own mini navy? because the biggest kid on the block is their friend and if you hurt them he will track you down and kill you. maybe not that day or tomorrow but you are going to be looking over your shoulder constantly wondering when they will find you and it is hard to enjoy your ill gotten gains when you are constantly waiting for them to find you.

Yeah but in the honorverse it’s more like it was in my grandfathers day. He was a cop on a motorcycle, often the only one on duty. No radio. So at each end of town there was a wealthy citizen who had a phone and agreed to put out a flag when the station called them. So when he eventually got there and saw the flag then he’d take it down and go back to the station and find out what they wanted him for. Then he’d go there. It wasn’t exactly a system to produced a rapid response.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Joat42 wrote:You say you see the problem in your head because you are a programmer.. You think a computer can't calculate a time accurate enough. What if I told you only need a 3D coordinate where the x, y & z values has 21 decimals accuracy to pinpoint a place in the Milky Way within 1 meter. A measurement of pulsars where you have an accuracy of 1ns needs 24 decimals of accuracy. An IEEE-754 128 bit float has ~34 decimals of accuracy and if you use a 256 bit float you get ~71 decimals of accuracy. And if you want to forgo binary fractions and use integer math you can have a 100 or a 1000 decimals places and run the calculations on a 50 year old computer without problems. It seems your beliefs in computers accuracy (or in-accuracy) is the typical programmers - only use the standard supplied libraries or frameworks with their limitations.

The computer certainly can be made to do the math with the required precision. Even now we have libraries to do math at any specified precision, albeit slowly.

The problem is the inputs aren't good enough. Few things can be measured past 12 digits of precision and most things not even that well. I don't care how good your computer, if your inputs are 12 digits then your outputs can't be better than 12 digits.

1 light ns equals 1 foot, so you only need 9-11 significant decimals measured - couple that with multi-sampling over given time and the usage of several sources you have no problems achieving the needed precision for a location.

Also, receiving and measuring radio signals from pulsars can be done with utmost precision by using an atomic receiver (see https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.08589).

Theemile wrote:You are kind of glossing over many items.

For example, Pearl...

Pilots can only fly so many hours before they get tired - tired Pilots make mistakes. mistakes equals lost planes and pilots.

WWII era planes were insanely maintenance intensive by modern standards. Engines lasted a few 100 hours of use between complete overhauls. Heavy sortie tempo equals missed maintenance, equals lost planes and pilots.

The first strikes hit an unaware US force, as the strikes commenced, more planes got airborne, and more AA batteries were manned. several cruisers and BBs were beached intentionally, making them great AA platforms, with readied crews. Surviving US aircrews were now air borne flying CAP; while outnumbered, they could deal heavy damage to already damaged airplanes and tired crews, who also had to attack armed AA batteries.

It was confirmed that Halsey's carriers where not at Pearl. Their 4 fresh strike groups could strike at any moment, best to vacate the area and avoid direct confrontation with a fresh, near parity enemy force.

And in fact Enterprise was in the area and IIRC put up scouts searching for the Japanese carriers.

Even in the 2nd wave the improving US defenses inflicted 2/3rd of the total casualties the Japanese suffered (so about twice as many as inflicted on the first wave). A third wave could easily face double the losses of the second. And if a US carrier's dive bombers did manage to surprise the Japanese -- well Midway showed how hideously vulnerable carriers can be to dive bombers.

That said, there are some targets that might have been worth taking those losses. The US already had a shortage of tankers, if the fuel farms had been destroyed not only would the US lose the built up reserves for operating their fleet but would have to divert scarce tanker resources to build that stockpile back up, and worse, to act as floating oil tanks until the ones ashore (and their piping and distribution infrastructure) could be repaired or rebuilt.

That could have put a serious crimp in the US's ability to pull of the carrier raids that helped keep Japan distracted during the months between Pearl Harbor and Midway. As it was US commanders often had to modify their preferred tactics because of the difficulty in keeping all their ships (especially the destroyers) fueled. (And the slow battleships spent most of the first couple years of the war on the West Coast because the US couldn't transport enough extra fuel into the Pacific to fuel them as well if they'd been forward deployed.

Jonathan_S wrote:And in fact Enterprise was in the area and IIRC put up scouts searching for the Japanese carriers.

Even in the 2nd wave the improving US defenses inflicted 2/3rd of the total casualties the Japanese suffered (so about twice as many as inflicted on the first wave). A third wave could easily face double the losses of the second. And if a US carrier's dive bombers did manage to surprise the Japanese -- well Midway showed how hideously vulnerable carriers can be to dive bombers.

That said, there are some targets that might have been worth taking those losses. The US already had a shortage of tankers, if the fuel farms had been destroyed not only would the US lose the built up reserves for operating their fleet but would have to divert scarce tanker resources to build that stockpile back up, and worse, to act as floating oil tanks until the ones ashore (and their piping and distribution infrastructure) could be repaired or rebuilt.

That could have put a serious crimp in the US's ability to pull of the carrier raids that helped keep Japan distracted during the months between Pearl Harbor and Midway. As it was US commanders often had to modify their preferred tactics because of the difficulty in keeping all their ships (especially the destroyers) fueled. (And the slow battleships spent most of the first couple years of the war on the West Coast because the US couldn't transport enough extra fuel into the Pacific to fuel them as well if they'd been forward deployed.

Would it have made life difficult enough for the US to eventually agree to a negotiated settlement regarding Japan's Pacific conquests? It's a pretty big hypothetical but they could have burnt Pearl Harbor to the ground without eliminating the US's ability to wage war. Or would the losses have placed too many restrictions on follow up carrier actions?

noblehunter wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And in fact Enterprise was in the area and IIRC put up scouts searching for the Japanese carriers.

Even in the 2nd wave the improving US defenses inflicted 2/3rd of the total casualties the Japanese suffered (so about twice as many as inflicted on the first wave). A third wave could easily face double the losses of the second. And if a US carrier's dive bombers did manage to surprise the Japanese -- well Midway showed how hideously vulnerable carriers can be to dive bombers.

That said, there are some targets that might have been worth taking those losses. The US already had a shortage of tankers, if the fuel farms had been destroyed not only would the US lose the built up reserves for operating their fleet but would have to divert scarce tanker resources to build that stockpile back up, and worse, to act as floating oil tanks until the ones ashore (and their piping and distribution infrastructure) could be repaired or rebuilt.

That could have put a serious crimp in the US's ability to pull of the carrier raids that helped keep Japan distracted during the months between Pearl Harbor and Midway. As it was US commanders often had to modify their preferred tactics because of the difficulty in keeping all their ships (especially the destroyers) fueled. (And the slow battleships spent most of the first couple years of the war on the West Coast because the US couldn't transport enough extra fuel into the Pacific to fuel them as well if they'd been forward deployed.

Would it have made life difficult enough for the US to eventually agree to a negotiated settlement regarding Japan's Pacific conquests? It's a pretty big hypothetical but they could have burnt Pearl Harbor to the ground without eliminating the US's ability to wage war. Or would the losses have placed too many restrictions on follow up carrier actions?

Eventually, the US would have rebuilt any damaged infrastructure in the Islands - the area is too big to watch everything, and the distance is too far from any Japanese staging area to project an effctive permanent presence that could prevent any rebuilding.

As was, the US leadership had backbone, so I doubt a negotiated settlement would have been reached, but under another administration, it might have been possible. At most, it would have lengthened the war for 12-18 months - when 3 more Midways, 12 more Essexes, 1 more Alaska, and 2 more Iowas would have been in the US Firing line.

Theemile wrote:As was, the US leadership had backbone, so I doubt a negotiated settlement would have been reached, but under another administration, it might have been possible. At most, it would have lengthened the war for 12-18 months - when 3 more Midways, 12 more Essexes, 1 more Alaska, and 2 more Iowas would have been in the US Firing line.

Probably not even that since the loss of facilities at Pearl Harbor should have had little to no impact on the Manhattan Project's resources. The atomic bombings were carried out from airfields on the Northern Mariana Islands; those islands captured in July '44. Those new and rebuilt airfield were already hosting major bomber forces by Dec '44. So even if the capture of those islands had been delayed by 6 months it looks like the Enola Gay's mission could have occurred basically on schedule.

Now I suppose there's a question of whether Japan would have been ready to surrender after a couple of atomic bombs if many of their cities hadn't already been burned out by months of conventional bombing, their islands effectively blockaded, and their people starting to starve. But still I'd be surprised if the war drug on another 6-12 months after the atomic bombs started falling.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:As was, the US leadership had backbone, so I doubt a negotiated settlement would have been reached, but under another administration, it might have been possible. At most, it would have lengthened the war for 12-18 months - when 3 more Midways, 12 more Essexes, 1 more Alaska, and 2 more Iowas would have been in the US Firing line.

Probably not even that since the loss of facilities at Pearl Harbor should have had little to no impact on the Manhattan Project's resources. The atomic bombings were carried out from airfields on the Northern Mariana Islands; those islands captured in July '44. Those new and rebuilt airfield were already hosting major bomber forces by Dec '44. So even if the capture of those islands had been delayed by 6 months it looks like the Enola Gay's mission could have occurred basically on schedule.

Now I suppose there's a question of whether Japan would have been ready to surrender after a couple of atomic bombs if many of their cities hadn't already been burned out by months of conventional bombing, their islands effectively blockaded, and their people starting to starve. But still I'd be surprised if the war drug on another 6-12 months after the atomic bombs started falling.

As I said - At Most.

Anyway you analyze it, the more time given to the US, the more resources they have available for their end game, Where as the US blockade of Japan slowly squeezed a resource poor nation further, keeping the needed raw materials from it's factories. At best, the Japanese might have been able to complete another carrier or 2, but with their pilot training program, they never would have effectively been able to arm them.

Yes, the Japanese had programs for an intercontinental bomber in the works, rocket and jet fighters, a nacent nuke program, and (worst) a very advanced bio weapons program in Manchuria. But with the blockade, there wouldn't have been enough materials for an effective bomber fleet, or the fuel to have them fly routine sorties.

The tested bio-weapons weren't effective, but they were not directly dropped on large cities in large quantities, with only 6 people on the US mainland killed by one of the Japanese balloon bomb's direct charges.

As was the rockets and jets could not be built in sufficient quantity, nor did they have enough fuel to overly effect the war - and here too the pilot training issues crept up - forcing Japan to lean heavily on kamikaze tactics, even with their wonder weapons.