Post League Eridani

GloriousRuse wrote:Incidentally, “threats and caving” basically makes up the majority of use of force questions.

“If you do this, we’ll do that”. And then both does sit there wondering how serious the other side is, and if it’s worth paying the price. If the answer comes back as “yes, the other side is serious, and no, it’s not worth the price” then you back down.

For example, the price of invading the DPRK is virtually assured destruction of Seoul, millions of civilian deaths, 100ks of ROK casualties, 10ks of US casualties, and possibly having a war with China if things go wrong. Which is why no one seriously considered it until recently when the potential of nuking LA became a real thing.

So in a sense, yes, every leader you have had in your lifetime has probably spent more time “caving” than they would ever admit. Every African war that we decide isn’t worth it, every Iranian militia we don’t drag into an open war, every state based cyber-attack against the financial sector, every show down in the pacific that leaves the Chinese a little more unofficial territory, every South American nation that imposed unanswered tariffs because the trade war isn’t worth it...

Every day, in every way, leaders cave under perceived or explicit threats. The alternative is pretty much perpetual war.

Mostly all true and I only say "mostly" because there may be things that have turned out well that I do not know about. How much simpler, before the threat of nuclear annihilation, when Great Britain could tell Germany that they stand guarantee to another nation's sovereignty and invasion meant war. Mutual defense alliances still exist, but are ultimately backed by MAD and we hope that is something an opponent would not want to test.

stewart wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Anyone try reading when your very large, lumbering, lunatic, lap lab insists that she should be ensconcenced in your lap? She either insists that you should be petting her and rubbing her belly, or be still so she can sleep. She also snores.

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Lap Labs can make an excellent blanket and bookstand

-- Stewart

Just like am electric blanket.

Unfortunately; she gets annoyed when I am reading rather than petting her.

stewart wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Anyone try reading when your very large, lumbering, lunatic, lap lab insists that she should be ensconcenced in your lap? She either insists that you should be petting her and rubbing her belly, or be still so she can sleep. She also snores.

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Lap Labs can make an excellent blanket and bookstand

-- Stewart

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just like am electric blanket.

Unfortunately; she gets annoyed when I am reading rather than petting her.

If you have a Lab, why are you wasting her talents? She's a Retriever. What's she meant to retrieve? Remotes!

The fun part is that, real world, the idea of small nuclear exchanges is coming back in vogue. Not terribly related to EEVs on account of even one stray missile can do as much to a planet as the entire US-Soviet arsenals...

But the rebirth of “tactical” nukes is well underway. The Russians for instance rather openly state that in a limited war over their near abroad (we tend to think of them as the nations bordering Russia) they would likely use a few smaller warheads to evaporate a US-NATO response and thereby bring everyone to the negotiating table. The Gerasimov Doctrine. (For the more historically minded, it is based on a lot of the same IR theory as Flexible Response was for us, but with much more attention to the early escalation rungs)

I guess it does raise the question of “what level of EEV would be acceptable before sides resorted to MAD”?

KEWing capitals may become the new chalk mark on the fortress wall

cthia wrote:

stewart wrote:


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Lap Labs can make an excellent blanket and bookstand

-- Stewart

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just like am electric blanket.

Unfortunately; she gets annoyed when I am reading rather than petting her.

If you have a Lab, why are you wasting her talents? She's a Retriever. What's she meant to retrieve? Remotes!

She is a seeing eye dog reject who was expelled from puppy school for excessive drooling. Her skill sets are rather limited.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

cthia wrote:
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Lap Labs can make an excellent blanket and bookstand

-- Stewart

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just like am electric blanket.

Unfortunately; she gets annoyed when I am reading rather than petting her.

If you have a Lab, why are you wasting her talents? She's a Retriever. What's she meant to retrieve? Remotes!

She is a seeing eye dog reject who was expelled from puppy school for excessive drooling. Her skill sets are rather limited.[/quote]

Small scale nukes can still do incredible damage. Hit the main city of a small country and you'll take out most of its intellectual core, a large part of its middle class, and most of its government.

And there are strategic points that can be horrific. One nuke on the Dardanelles and Russia wouldn't be able to sail out of the Black Sea. Turkey would be ruined. And that could be done with one small nuke. Use a container with a long half-life and ships might not be able to pass through for a few centuries.

As the series opens, PRH has a massive fleet and has been taking over other systems for decades. The SLN has not been involved but has grown to very much it to the size and tech level it still had when the GA arrives on it's doorstep inside the Earth system. They were the largest navy in terms of ships, in terms of capital ships and numbers of people. Their tech was the "known" standard and they were running both a deterrent against taking over at least SL member or controled or Protectorate systems with a combinaion of policy of massive overkill capable responce in terms of capital ships and OFS being supported by FF out there stamping out neobarb problems.
They really didn't change that much. They mostly ignored the tech and tactical happenings out in the Haven Quadrant and the only involvement in the PRH-SKM war was imbargos on military tech and similar things. What reporting came back was not believed. Remember that SLN didn't send observers. If they got reports via SL Member Beowulf, they ignored them or buried them in was an internal politicaly choked ONI and R&D areas. Anybody who raised question or pointed out things that were intersting but went against policy (and the Alignment didn't want discussed) had their professional life ruined and buried where they wouldn't cause trouble.
Haven and Manticore (and the IAE etc) went though that Darwinian process known as war and SLN wan't paying any attention. They didn't until they were manuvered into getting involved. That involvement was to both kill off a great part of the Navy ships and active duty personel (particularly those who actualy might known a thing about combat like FF) and to hammer back 1s Manticore and they anybody else who was messing with THE PLAN to break the League/punish Beowulf and leave nobody with enough power or true organization or will to resist the Alignment takeover.

You always need a Plan D because sometimes stuff goes wrong. The Alignment's responce was to organize killing more people and blame others.
The SLN could probably have taken both Haven and Manticore just though weight of numbers right up to the point where the new LACs, the FTL, true Pod Doctrine and Apollo/Keyhole hit substantial deployment with RMN and PRH reemerged as ROH.
Sure, SLN would have lost a lot of ships and people but the sledghammer approach done sequentialy against a number of targets....like Haven itself and probably a Filerta sized fleet against the Manticore system withoug the GA and shoals of pods and being there, would have had a reasonable chance of working. Hell, send 1000 SLN SD to Manticore right after Haven and Manticore started the 2nd round of the war and SL is in posession of the Junction and able to hit Haven.....IF they have been looking at the actual tactics that have evolved and come up with their own counters.
It would also help if SLN had been working at being able to handle the number of missils that Haven and Manticore could throw in one engagement so they didn't get swamped all the time.

Brigade XO wrote:They really didn't change that much. They mostly ignored the tech and tactical happenings out in the Haven Quadrant and the only involvement in the PRH-SKM war was imbargos on military tech and similar things. What reporting came back was not believed. Remember that SLN didn't send observers. If they got reports via SL Member Beowulf, they ignored them or buried them in was an internal politicaly choked ONI and R&D areas. Anybody who raised question or pointed out things that were intersting but went against policy (and the Alignment didn't want discussed) had their professional life ruined and buried where they wouldn't cause trouble.
Haven and Manticore (and the IAE etc) went though that Darwinian process known as war and SLN wan't paying any attention. They didn't until they were manuvered into getting involved. That involvement was to both kill off a great part of the Navy ships and active duty personel (particularly those who actualy might known a thing about combat like FF) and to hammer back 1s Manticore and they anybody else who was messing with THE PLAN to break the League/punish Beowulf and leave nobody with enough power or true organization or will to resist the Alignment takeover.

The Mesan Alignment plan failed, as far as the League goes, because they maneuvered the League into a war where it had no chance to scratch the paint on the opposing fleet (this is an exaggeration). The sucker punch of Oyster Bay was intended to turn the war in the Haven Quadrant into a three sided affair that might give the SLN a chance to get up to speed. That failed, because it was a blatant attack by a hidden foe of whose existence the participants had just become aware; uniting them in the knowledge that the war was the result of outside influences.

As you say, the Mesan Alignment needed a plan D.

tlb wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:They really didn't change that much. They mostly ignored the tech and tactical happenings out in the Haven Quadrant and the only involvement in the PRH-SKM war was imbargos on military tech and similar things. What reporting came back was not believed. Remember that SLN didn't send observers. If they got reports via SL Member Beowulf, they ignored them or buried them in was an internal politicaly choked ONI and R&D areas. Anybody who raised question or pointed out things that were intersting but went against policy (and the Alignment didn't want discussed) had their professional life ruined and buried where they wouldn't cause trouble.
Haven and Manticore (and the IAE etc) went though that Darwinian process known as war and SLN wan't paying any attention. They didn't until they were manuvered into getting involved. That involvement was to both kill off a great part of the Navy ships and active duty personel (particularly those who actualy might known a thing about combat like FF) and to hammer back 1s Manticore and they anybody else who was messing with THE PLAN to break the League/punish Beowulf and leave nobody with enough power or true organization or will to resist the Alignment takeover.

The Mesan Alignment plan failed, as far as the League goes, because they maneuvered the League into a war where it had no chance to scratch the paint on the opposing fleet (this is an exaggeration). The sucker punch of Oyster Bay was intended to turn the war in the Haven Quadrant into a three sided affair that might give the SLN a chance to get up to speed. That failed, because it was a blatant attack by a hidden foe of whose existence the participants had just become aware; uniting them in the knowledge that the war was the result of outside influences.

As you say, the Mesan Alignment needed a plan D.

That's the problem with five hundred year old plans. They get outdated. The MAlign maneuvered to have HAVEN to the real damage after it took over Manticore.

Most of the rest was in fine shape. When Elizabeth and Eloise joined forces, the plan did come together. But my guess is that they did not expect such a quick defeat of the League and the blocking of much of the illegal damage they pushed the Sollie Navy to do.

Had the Battle or Frontier fleets actually damaged dozens of planets, the Solly league would have been hated and would eventually have fallen apart. Instead, only a small number of planets were damaged. It is likely that there will be court martials and major damages paid. But the League will continue. And now it has a good reason to go after MAlign as well.

kzt wrote:An interesting thought on proliferation. If you get a sample of a piece of tech you can reproduce it. Just erode it one atom at a time.

Depends on the tech.

I have devised a system for the safe storage and transport of antimatter. The antimatter is in the form of anti-neodymium magnets with a cladding made of anti-tungsten.

This is inserted in a holder of normal matter with tungsten in the inner face and it's won neodymium magnets. There is a small gap with an extremely hard vacuum between the two pieces. (The tungsten is to reduce the vapor pressure as much as possible to avoid contaminating the vacuum. While there will be some loss if it's kept low enough it won't create enough heat to destroy the containment.)

Try eroding that atom by atom. At a minimum you lose your lab, if it's a big capsule you might lose your city.