Opening Phase of Havenite war

Silverwall wrote: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.

It is not just 20/20; its is saying that if the story had started out in the different way, then RFC would have had to let Haven win. It is a challenge to the writer to say that at that point, he would not have been able to find a realistic path to a victory by Manticore.

Interesting and if true, then the plan by the Mesan Alignment could have proceeded with the original antagonists - maybe with more success.

tlb wrote:

Silverwall wrote: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.

It is not just 20/20; its is saying that if the story had started out in the different way, then RFC would have had to let Haven win. It is a challenge to the writer to say that at that point, he would not have been able to find a realistic path to a victory by Manticore.

Interesting and if true, then the plan by the Mesan Alignment could have proceeded with the original antagonists - maybe with more success.

Actually I see it 100% the other way round, that Haven would be crippled by the tech difference and then be forced to surrender. I don't believe they had the tech/doctorine to deliver enough of an overwhelming blow to destroy Manticore out of the gate while covering the systems they need to. Also storywise an attack on Manticore leaves no room for the political machinations that plagued the post SVW Manticore political structure. Attacking the home planet is a Pearl Harbour moment that unifies those attacked.

Professional military planners have a deep abiding hatred of all or nothing attacks that leave you crippled if you fail and tend to save them for desperation moments. The start of the Havenite wars is not that moment.

TFLYTSNBN wrote: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.[snip]

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.
[snip]

The difference should be that it's way easier to refuel Honorverse starships than it is to coal warships. You don't have to deal with weather or rolling seas in space so any out of the way place is the equivalent of a sheltered anchorage. Now the further out you strike the longer those forces are tied up and the harder it'll be for any heavily battle damaged ship to make it home. But pre or even post strike fueling shouldn't be a crippling limitation.

You don't need to seize an intact enemy fueling depot in order to get your strike fleet home; you just need to send ahead enough freighters configured as tankers to perform the necessary fueling. (Ideally as some randomly picked deep space rendezvous point; not in the hostile system after the battle where it could be interrupted by nodal response forces - and out there there's effectively no analogous concern to your resupply ships coming under attack from enemy aircraft or submarines)


So that logistical support in the Honorverse should have been easier to come up with that what the US had to figure out to do under weigh and forward logistics and repair in WWII.

Silverwall wrote: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.

I’m saying they had no end game. They have no way of winning a prolonged war of attrition unless the SKM leadership decides that today is the day we and our families get shot by the peeps.

kzt wrote: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?

Do individual Solarian League members have the right to annex other star systems? That goes beyond anything we've seen in the books imho. And I still think you're assuming much more willingness from the League to get involved in the situation than would have actually existed. Individual actors within the League (shipping lines, certain OFS commissioners, Mesa-allied transstellars) were obsessed with Manticore, but I think most members of the bureaucracy were far more interested in internal politiking than in leaping into the middle of a giant war, even for huge potential gains. Sure, they'd win, the SLN is invincible! But it'd be such a hassle and cost a lot of money and disrupt all sorts of nice ongoing corruption. Remember, the only reason the MA was able to manipulate the war with Manticore was that they had infiltrated the upper ranks of the government and could use blackmail, bribes, and misdirection to move the pieces around. It took a lot of work, because no one in Old Chicago was interested in starting a war with the Star Empire, even though they assumed they'd win.

Not to mention that given the kind of "deal" that OFS would've offered, it's not clear to me how much better off they'd be compared to conquest by Haven.

Silverwall wrote: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.

tlb wrote:It is not just 20/20; its is saying that if the story had started out in the different way, then RFC would have had to let Haven win. It is a challenge to the writer to say that at that point, he would not have been able to find a realistic path to a victory by Manticore.

Interesting and if true, then the plan by the Mesan Alignment could have proceeded with the original antagonists - maybe with more success.

Silverwall wrote:Actually I see it 100% the other way round, that Haven would be crippled by the tech difference and then be forced to surrender. I don't believe they had the tech/doctorine to deliver enough of an overwhelming blow to destroy Manticore out of the gate while covering the systems they need to. Also storywise an attack on Manticore leaves no room for the political machinations that plagued the post SVW Manticore political structure. Attacking the home planet is a Pearl Harbour moment that unifies those attacked.

Professional military planners have a deep abiding hatred of all or nothing attacks that leave you crippled if you fail and tend to save them for desperation moments. The start of the Havenite wars is not that moment.

As I understood the point of this thread: the strategy that Haven pursued was a failure, it had stagnated in terms of technology because of government policies and was attacking a wealthy nation with a vibrant pursuit of technological advances in Manticore. Therefore the conjecture is that an initial massive attack, might have prevailed.

My point is that I believe that RFC could have gone with that and still obtained a Manticoran victory. But if not then we would have the situation for which the Malign had planned.

Your point is that it probably would just be a more spectacular way for Haven to lose.

Both points could be valid.

kzt wrote:I’m saying they had no end game. They have no way of winning a prolonged war of attrition unless the SKM leadership decides that today is the day we and our families get shot by the peeps.

It's not clear to me that (prior to the Revolution) the Harris Administration was quite so trigger happy with the broader leadership -- at least not as long as they were willing the avoid any resistance after their defeat.

Even with the proto-State Sec it's probably easier to buy off much the governing classes of conquered worlds with some of the wealth they're extracting from the economy (before they ruin it) than it is to potentially create even more resistance by highhandedly executing them and their families. So this might not seem quite so life or death for the government and their families as you're hypothesizing.



And as someone else pointed out, this only works if the IAN or League is willing to cut a deal to keep Haven out. OFS might have been more than happy to let Manticore and avoid stepping in front of Haven's SDs if Haven had offered them say 50% of the profit of the Junction to stand aside. After all 50% is way more than Haven's getting now so it might well seem a cheap price to buy off potential intervention of the SLN. And I have doubts even if the Beowulf self-defense force intervened without League sanction that the Mandarins would choose to go to war should that SDF get blown away on some "ill advised foreign adventure" -- especially if they get bought off with a solid share of the Junction revenues.

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:I’m saying they had no end game. They have no way of winning a prolonged war of attrition unless the SKM leadership decides that today is the day we and our families get shot by the peeps.

It's not clear to me that (prior to the Revolution) the Harris Administration was quite so trigger happy with the broader leadership -- at least not as long as they were willing the avoid any resistance after their defeat.

I’ll point out that everyone was shocked to find the various people from still alive on hell, including the leaders of pre-revolution conquered planets

And you don’t ask, you create a fait accompli where there is a SL fleet at a Beowulf province on shore leave when the peeps cross the wall. What happens then? It really doesn’t matter, the peeps lose.

kzt wrote: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 do not understand your scenario: a long drawn out war of attrition is exactly what Haven chose to fight in the books and they were losing at it, because of the technological disadvantage that was baked into the beginning of the war. Haven was constantly being put in the position of reacting to something new.

Manticore was only belatedly put in a position of buying off the Andermani with half of Silesia; but that was more to keep them out of adventures around Sidemore, not because the RMN needed the help.

Indeed. The Peep’s deliberately created a long war of attrition. Give me a way this produces a win for them.