Opening Phase of Havenite war

cthia wrote:Nice thread!

I've posited the same thing. The Peeps waited until after their window of opportunity had long since closed. Albeit, there was a lot of that going around. There is one big variable though. To do what you suggest would have involved assembling this massive juggernaut somehow in secrecy, which, given the brains of Manticoran Admiralty and Honor, would surely have signaled a Case Zulu. With the element of surprise, the result might've been burnt Manticoran toast. If OpSec had been compromised and a welcoming committee formed, it might not have been worth it. One thing Haven had to worry about was the fact that any such attempt would have been an "all in" attempt, which might have left them bare naked with so many systems to cover.

They already had assembled a fleet of ~90 SD's in secret, Manticore could have set up a surprise in the Home System but the problem with that is that it is a lot easier for Haven to gain intelligence in Manticore Home system than for Manticore to gain Intelligence in Havenite space. Just the sheer size makes gathering the intelligence once you have it time consuming. By the time the RMN gets the intelligence back to the Admiralty, analyzes it, makes a decision and starts issuing orders it would be months.

Also, the Peeps needed control of Trevor's Star before executing such a plan.

Trevor's Star was nothing but a threat that the RMN HAD to honour, any plan that involved an attack from Trevor's Star was in my opinion suicide plain and simple.


As for the all or nothing aspect? I agree it would be terrifying for a nation to commit something like 50-60% of their wallers on a single attack but unless they send a complete idiot to lead said attack they would still inflict crippling damage to the RMN, the RMN would not be able to open up the home system to further attack thereby freeing Haven from having to worry about retaliatory attacks.

Home Fleet would have had ~100 SD's, and another ~28 in ship hands, thats almost 69% of the RMN's SD's in one place, they get destroyed or even the majority of them get destroyed the war is lost.

Silverwall wrote:Two things:

1) While winning an opening battle of manticore would be great they also had to plan what happens if they loose. Then they have almost certainly thrown away any numerical advantage they had and are now playing defence against a riled up manticore with only a fraction of the fleet. Failing to win out right is not somthing they can come back from. Also it is a massive political escalation vis-a-vis the league and may provoke the 900lb bear.

Ok I agree with that, but even if that was the main concern they could have concentrated their forces and attacked Grayson when they knew it had 8 squadrons of SD's and done so with overwhelming force(150 or more SD's) ditto for Hancock, Alison, Zanzibar and Grendelsbane. My personal preference is if you have the element of surprise go all out to get complete victory if possible but if thats not possible go for any concentrations of RMN ships outside of the RMN Home System in overwhelming force, think about the attack on Grayson if Haven had brought 150 SD's instead of 90. They expected 40 SD's or less but got close to 96 SD's instead but with overwhelming force in the attack.

2) no-one had ever tried such a massive exercise for over 200 years. This is like asking the US to launch the D-day landings in early 1943 without first having practiced in Torch and the Mediteranean

But at the same time, if it had to be done it would have been done. Just because haven doesn't have experience with operating fleets of 300 SD's, DN's and BB's doesn't mean they should postpone until they do have some experience, because by the time they had some experience their fleet was reduced dramatically making the point irrelevant.

3) Bonus point: no-one epected the Coup by Robspierre and the Committee of public safety. Without thier interfearance the disasters of the immediate post Hancock/Yeltsin defeats would have been nowhere as bad. RFC made it very clear the political uncertaintly did to the PRN what the Russian revolution did to the Tsars army in 1917.

Haven blew the element of surprise on insignificant prizes, if the coup had not happened they would still be 80 wallers down for next to no benefit. Even if it was a complete success where they magically suffered no losses but knocked off Hancock and destroyed the 4 squadrons in Grayson they would not have been that dramatically better off then before.

Play it out. Haven is slowly grinding down the MA, and step by step getting closer to Manticore. What options does Maniticore have to get major military assistance?

Given that the alternative is that the ruling class of manticore gets shot? So less than perfect solutions become much more interesting than they might have been just a few short years ago.

Is there anyone who might be willing to offer effective military protection in exchange for say 50-75% of the Junction revenue and discount prices for their vessels transit?

Anyone at all? Maybe someone's who could be convinced to do this in exchange for generous contribution to their retirement account? Or someone to whom rational appeals of mutual advantage might work better.

So essentially a long drawn out war of attrition where haven grinds down the RMN means that when they cross the wall at Manticore they are either going to be facing the SLN or the IAN. And then they do what?

I think the issues with this strategy are as follows:

(1) Havenite intelligence on the Manticore Home System was necessarily much, much weaker than it was on outlying stations and allies, given the impossibility of inserting scout ships. I doubt very much that Parnell had anything like as good an idea of the size of Home Fleet or it's disposition or just how powerful the fixed defenses were as WE do.

(2) It's true that Solarian Strategy called for an immediate, overwhelming attack on the enemy home system, but the League hadn't fought anyone except single-system, fifth rate powers in generations. Given the existence of the Alliance, Manticore was essentially a multi-system star nation, from Haven's perspective. And the strategic conventional wisdom in regards to that called for a deliberate, star-to-star advance, securing your flanks and rear as you went. (Weber talked about this here: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/103/0). Until McQueen and White Haven reinvented the whole concept of the "deep strike", it was universally seen as foolhardy. For that matter:

(3) A deep strike strategy before MDMs or missile pods is going to be VERY, VERY risky. The developments of 1905-1922 really shifted the balance of power away from the defensive, but I think we can forget how much weaker a Havenite or Manticorian SD was at the start of the war in terms of firepower. They would have had a much harder time taking out those forts than I think you're expecting.

(4) Even if they win the Battle of Manticore, they still have to keep control of the system from inevitable counterattacks. Most of the RMN would still be alive, and it would have a multi-planet support structure, while the People's Navy would have been gutted in a best-case scenario. Sure, the advantage would lie with Haven, especially if they were able to destroy the system infrastructure, but then you have to administer a VERY restive empire (including some VERY restive new acquisitions) with a Navy that's been smashed. Not to mention that the casualty figures would have seriously undermined the government's legitimacy. Remember, the Legislativists were more worried about domestic unrest and opposition than they were about foreign attacks. (Rightfully, as it turned out).

(5) Obviously it looks better in hindsight, but it's a high-risk, high-reward gambit. If Parnell and Harris had known how outclassed they were? Maybe they'd have gambled everything. But from their perspective, the military situation was very favorable. If this went wrong, they'd lost the bulk of their Navy (and the war) in a single afternoon, and they had no way of knowing for sure that it wouldn't. The risk were far to high to justify it, given what they knew at the time.

Sigs wrote:Haven blew the element of surprise on insignificant prizes, if the coup had not happened they would still be 80 wallers down for next to no benefit. Even if it was a complete success where they magically suffered no losses but knocked off Hancock and destroyed the 4 squadrons in Grayson they would not have been that dramatically better off then before.

I don't agree that it'd be "insignificant". The prize Haven originally was aiming at was closer to 12 squadrons(including TF Hancock and the 4 squadrons supposedly moved out of Yeltsin). That's more than a third of the RMN's battle wall.

If their plan worked, they would not have lost as many wallers as they did. Eg. 20, 40 or 60, not 80.

NathanG wrote:

(5) Obviously it looks better in hindsight, but it's a high-risk, high-reward gambit. If Parnell and Harris had known how outclassed they were? Maybe they'd have gambled everything. But from their perspective, the military situation was very favorable. If this went wrong, they'd lost the bulk of their Navy (and the war) in a single afternoon, and they had no way of knowing for sure that it wouldn't. The risk were far to high to justify it, given what they knew at the time.

They simply couldn’t win with the strategy they had. I don’t see any way it results in haven controlling the junction and Manticore. There are just too many options for Manticore that frustrate that plan given the time for it to become obvious to the elites of the SKM that they are doomed if this goes on.

It should not be forgotten that Weber's depiction of his ships in the early stages of the war is that unless operating in a gravity wave, their endurance and hence operational range is analogous to coal fired warship or may be oil fired warships rather than nuclear powered warships sailing ships. Fuel, even fusion fuel, is a limiting factor. Endurance and range is months, not years and hundreds rather than thousands of lightyears. I recall Weber's reaction when a certain NAMELESSFLY used the information presented in Honor's sneaky use of fusion rockets rather than impellar drive to sneak up on the blind imbeciles at Cerbus to calculate the percentage of ship mass which is fuel. It wasn't trivial.

As a result, deep strike raids in the Honorverse become as risky as the USN sailing from Hawaii to retake Manilla from the IJN. Unless the USN wins the battle and regains control of the fueling station, it is a one way voyage. Ditto for the IJN at Peal Harbor. They didnt have the fuel reserves to fight or evade the American carriers that had not been in port, so they ran away.

Logistical limitations explain why the USN developed underway replenishment to a fine art that astonished the British when they finally resumed operations in the Pacific after VE Day.. It also explains why the US didn't bypass every Pacific island to strike directly Japan. Logistical considerations motivate the US to enter into entangling alliances. The prospective introduction of conceptual, 25,000 ton, nuclear powered missile cruisers will enable a somewhat more isolationist foreign policy.

Weber never really describes the battle to retake Trevor's Star. I expect that the logistics with tankers as well as munition ships were a huge factor. Once the RMN had regained Trevor's star, Whitehaven's Operation Buttercup and Honor's Cutworm raids became far more feasible.

The SLN is obviously dependant on member systems providing fuel as needed to deploy and patrol.

kzt wrote:
They simply couldn’t win with the strategy they had. I don’t see any way it results in haven controlling the junction and Manticore. There are just too many options for Manticore that frustrate that plan given the time for it to become obvious to the elites of the SKM that they are doomed if this goes on.

I mean, let's look at this. You mentioned the Solarian League and the Andermani Empire as the two potential counterweights the SKM could bring in, right? In fact, given the power of the PRH those are probably the only possibilities. But I'm not sure either would have intervened. Granted, OFS would love to get its hand on the Junction, but would they be willing to jump into the middle of a massive shooting war to do so? I'm not certain. OFS is greedy, but also cautious. They pick on small, defenseless nations that nobody cares or knows about. This would be a huge divergence from their strategy. Especially since this couldn't be a rogue local commissioner going off on his own, given the astrography. It would have to a direct deal with the Ministry of the Interior, and I don't think anyone in Old Chicago would be willing to sign off on this. Wasn't the reason Erewhon renounced their defensive treaty with the League that they were convinced that it wouldn't honor it when the PRH rolled in? That seems to me to speak to a fundamentally conservative policy.

The Empire seems more possible to me; if Manticore gave them Silesia they might jump in. But given Andermani realpolitik, if Manticore is close to losing the war, why join the losing side? I could see Gustav grabbing Silesia while everyone is distracted and then trying to build up a large enough fleet to stand off the peeps by himself.

I'm not saying that Andermani or Solarian intervention was impossible, I'm just not sure it's as likely as you seem to be saying.

A couple of things to keep in mind.
a) SL members can conduct their own foreign policy.
b) The SL has no legal basis to get involved in the government of SL members.

So you go to Beowulf and say, so we'd like to join with Beowulf because otherwise we'll get destroyed by the evil Peeps. Give us a list of what you need us to do and what changes you'd require. Oh, and how much will it cost to bribe the SLN to 'coincidentally' send a large detachment to Beowulf as part of an 'exercise'?

It's the invincible SLN. Are they scared of a few neo-barbs?

There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight in these responses. I have been critical of RFC's worldbuilding at times but in this case the justification for the behaviour of the Havenites was very realistic given the history he is modelling.

Part of this is that we go from warfare that is analagous to the limited warfare of the Louis XIV era. Where you fight for limited objectives while being diplomatic to the big players. 5 years later we have changed to modern total war thinking. But they DO NOT have a total war attitude at the start of hostilities and an opening strike at the Manticore system is very much total war thinking.

To those saying just do it anyway if your navy is not set up for deep deployments then your in a situation similar to the Wehrmacht sitting on the channel coast going... "how do we cross that?" you just don't have the resources, structures or doctrine to do it.