U.S. "Warships" in Mothballs

U.S. Warplanes in Mothballs

Anything the Solarian League can do. . . we can do better.

The SL had the right idea. It's crazy not to 'Waste not want not.' The problem isn't hoarding, it's not knowing when to. . . throw some shit away!



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I'm aware that the SLN had no intention of reactivating those obsolete ships, I understand that, but Buccaneer would have been real devastating if it had. . . then activated Buccaneer. Seemingly, they would have appeared to be everywhere, raining on everyone's parade.

The loss of life would have been much higher, but the ships were obsolete anyway. Destroying a lot more infrastructure as a terror campaign should have been more appealing, and effective. Why didn't they go whole hog with Buccaneer? Getting some worth in all of those ships? They had the weight advantage, throw it around!

cthia wrote:U.S. Warplanes in Mothballs

Anything the Solarian League can do. . . we can do better.

The SL had the right idea. It's crazy not to 'Waste not want not.' The problem isn't hording, it's not knowing when to. . . throw some shit away!

.

It seems to me there are three scenarios where it might make sense to keep a reserve (and the Davis Monthan is partly the later two of these)

1) When you've got a trained reservist force of personnel who can be called up to operate them it makes sense as you put new cutting edge equipment into service that the oldest of your in-service stuff get placed in reserve for their use in training or if called up to war, and the oldest stuff in reserve get scrapped. Kind of a hand-me down system; but only as much as you've got trained personnel to use (so maintaining the reserve doesn't cut too deeply into your procurement and operational budgets)

The UK Royal Navy did this up until the 20s and 30s when the naval treaties forced those 2nd line ships to be scrapped.


2) When you demobilize after a war or build-up and you've got more front-line equipment than you can use at your desired force level. Place the excess into reserve in case the situation unexpectedly changes; or you misjudged how far you demobilize. (While not necessarily a formal personnel reserve you've still got the recently demobilized personnel that could, in a true emergency, be tapped to man that equipment again).

The US Navy did this after WWII when they put lots of ships that had been front line units months before into mothballs. Some of them were pulled back out a few years later for Korea. Some, especially the Essex class carriers were modernized and replaced their never mothballed counterparts as they wore out, and some lingered in mothballs until scrapped.

3) When they serve as a reserve of spare parts for equipment still in service; especially for components that are no longer manufactured. (And often the reserve will transition from category 2 to 3 as they become obsolete for even second line use but can still be stripped for useful parts) Even when an entire model of plane is retired to Davis Monthan often it shares components (engines, etc) with other planes still in service or in the civilian fleet; and it's easier to park the whole plane out in the desert and only strip it as needed than it is to break them down into parts and put them in a warehouse.


But it doesn't make sense to hold onto reserve or mothball equipment when you can't man it, even in an emergency, and don't need it for spare parts. So even planes at Monthan eventually get scrapped when they don't serve any of those purposes.

cthia wrote:U.S. Warplanes in Mothballs

Anything the Solarian League can do. . . we can do better.

The SL had the right idea. It's crazy not to 'Waste not want not.' The problem isn't hording, it's not knowing when to. . . throw some shit away!

.

Well they did reactivate a mothballed B52 that had been there 7 years. Of course it took nearly a year of work to do so but it is a lot quicker than making a new aircraft.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/i-ll-b ... ec4c8bf5cf

cthia wrote:I'm aware that the SLN had no intention of reactivating those obsolete ships, I understand that, but Buccaneer would have been real devastating if it had. .

As I understand it: the SLN did not have the personnel to man those ships and could not afford to recruit and train the manpower needed, without a formal declaration of war. With a peacetime budget the SLN probably could not even afford the personnel needed to form the cadre to train those additional people to man the reserve fleet.

If the SLN needed forces for Buccaneer, then they would simply use active ships of the Battle and Frontier Fleets; once it became clear that they could not be used to fight the Grand Alliance. However at that point it would serve no purpose, because the war was lost.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm aware that the SLN had no intention of reactivating those obsolete ships, I understand that, but Buccaneer would have been real devastating if it had. .

As I understand it: the SLN did not have the personnel to man those ships and could not afford to recruit and train the manpower needed, without a formal declaration of war. With a peacetime budget the SLN probably could not even afford the personnel needed to form the cadre to train those additional people to man the reserve fleet.

If the SLN needed forces for Buccaneer, then they would simply use active ships of the Battle and Frontier Fleets; once it became clear that they could not be used to fight the Grand Alliance. However at that point it would serve no purpose, because the war was lost.

IINM, I read somewhere in UH that they retained a certain officer corp to man a percentage of the ships in mothballs. My point is that Buccaneer would have been a hell of a lot more effective throwing their weight around. The SLN's goal was to spread the GA so thin that they were too busy to actually fight a war, mount an attack, or effectively defend any territory except main nodes. As a terror campaign it would have been much more devastating and effective by spreading word of mouth. Also, it might've provided the desired fire suppression against splintering planets. It certainly appears to be a missed opportunity to train lower ranked officers and provide the much needed experience. Battle Fleet had no real experience. Pointing Buccaneer at many more targets would have been very successful overall.

cthia wrote:IINM, I read somewhere in UH that they retained a certain officer corp to man a percentage of the ships in mothballs. My point is that Buccaneer would have been a hell of a lot more effective throwing their weight around. The SLN's goal was to spread the GA so thin that they were too busy to actually fight a war, mount an attack, or effectively defend any territory except main nodes. As a terror campaign it would have been much more devastating and effective by spreading word of mouth. Also, it might've provided the desired fire suppression against splintering planets. It certainly appears to be a missed opportunity to train lower ranked officers and provide the much needed experience. Battle Fleet had no real experience. Pointing Buccaneer at many more targets would have been very successful overall.

I accept that they could have manned a percentage. I also accept that they could have spread destruction and terror with an expanded Buccaneer. But that does not result in a gain in worthwhile experience and does not help the war effort, because they still cannot face the Grand Alliance in battle and the final result is the same: a GA fleet sitting in the Sol system saying "Stop it".

What you seem to be trying to set up is a bunch of situations like Hypatia, which could give the SLN experience and would inflict damage on the GA; but there is no reason for the GA to play that game. The GA does not have to spread its units across all the vulnerable systems, as long as Sol is itself vulnerable. In any case Hypatia was not a great success for the SLN, at best it was a Pyrrhic victory over a greater outnumbered foe.

Going into Uncompromising Honor, the SLN did not have a single winning strategy; although there might have been multiple ways to lose more or less. The problem is that the Malign plan had programmed to League to be defeated; the plan failed only in that the SLN was so outclassed that it lost before the League could fragment into pieces that the Malign could sweep up.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:IINM, I read somewhere in UH that they retained a certain officer corp to man a percentage of the ships in mothballs. My point is that Buccaneer would have been a hell of a lot more effective throwing their weight around. The SLN's goal was to spread the GA so thin that they were too busy to actually fight a war, mount an attack, or effectively defend any territory except main nodes. As a terror campaign it would have been much more devastating and effective by spreading word of mouth. Also, it might've provided the desired fire suppression against splintering planets. It certainly appears to be a missed opportunity to train lower ranked officers and provide the much needed experience. Battle Fleet had no real experience. Pointing Buccaneer at many more targets would have been very successful overall.

I accept that they could have manned a percentage. I also accept that they could have spread destruction and terror with an expanded Buccaneer. But that does not result in a gain in worthwhile experience and does not help the war effort, because they still cannot face the Grand Alliance in battle and the final result is the same: a GA fleet sitting in the Sol system saying "Stop it".

What you seem to be trying to set up is a bunch of situations like Hypatia, which could give the SLN experience and would inflict damage on the GA; but there is no reason for the GA to play that game. The GA does not have to spread its units across all the vulnerable systems, as long as Sol is itself vulnerable. In any case Hypatia was not a great success for the SLN, at best it was a Pyrrhic victory over a greater outnumbered foe.

Going into Uncompromising Honor, the SLN did not have a single winning strategy; although there might have been multiple ways to lose more or less. The problem is that the Malign plan had programmed to League to be defeated; the plan failed only in that the SLN was so outclassed that it lost before the League could fragment into pieces that the Malign could sweep up.

Frontier Fleet didn't have the ships to spare. Kingsford pointed out - per word of Rajani - that they were already 20% understrength for peacetime duties in the Verge and Fringe. I suppose it should be mentioned that there were 180 ships in the reserve that they were activating.

I agree that at the end of the day, the ultimate outcome would have been a visit from the Salamander, but the Mandarins didn't know that. They never thought that the upstart neobarbs would pull that particular trigger. In fact - at the time - they welcomed any wrong political moves on Manticore's part, like so. It was thought that that would anger the Solarian natives and further the Mandarins' warmongering. So, why didn't they throw their weight around to make Buccaneer much more effective, since that's what was determined to be their only option to drag out the war until SL parity with Manty tech was achieved? Heck, it was pointed out that Buccaneer is the same swashbuckling tactics the Admiralty used Honor for in Cutworm -- less the blatant disregard for life, limbs and interstellar law, of course. Does anyone believe the RMN wouldn't have thrown more weight into Cutworm if it had the weight?

In sum, the SL did have a winning strategy, if they could only pull it off. It is the very same strategy the RMN had. Stall for enough time until R&D saves them. That's what Buccaneer was partly about.

cthia wrote:I agree that at the end of the day, the ultimate outcome would have been a visit from the Salamander, but the Mandarins didn't know that. They never thought that the upstart neobarbs would pull that particular trigger. In fact - at the time - they welcomed any wrong political moves on Manticore's part, like so. It was thought that that would anger the Solarian natives and further the Mandarins' warmongering. So, why didn't they throw their weight around to make Buccaneer much more effective, since that's what was determined to be their only option to drag out the war until SL parity with Manty tech was achieved? Heck, it was pointed out that Buccaneer is the same swashbuckling tactics the Admiralty used Honor for in Cutworm -- less the blatant disregard for life, limbs and interstellar law, of course. Does anyone believe the RMN wouldn't have thrown more weight into Cutworm if it had the weight?

In sum, the SL did have a winning strategy, if they could only pull it off. It is the very same strategy the RMN had. Stall for enough time until R&D saves them. That's what Buccaneer was partly about.

There is a fundamental difference between Buccaneer and either Cutworm or Sanskrit: the RMN operations were directed against planetary infrastructure that belonged to Haven and where success would diminish Haven's total productivity (therefore Haven would have to respond); whereas Buccaneer was directed against planetary infrastructure that was either non-aligned or currently part of the League. The RMN did have a response available at Hypatia, which is why the SLN did not achieve objectives; but had no reason to send ships to the other systems that were trashed.

But say that the SLN choose to expand Buccaneer and said to the Grand Alliance "try and stop us". What is the proper response? The RMN was holding off on a strike on Haven's central planet until all the fleet was equipped with Apollo and Keyhole, but there was no such constraint on a move against Sol. The proper response is what happened in the finale of UH.

You say that the Mandarins thought that they had a winning strategy in Buccaneer. But Buccaneer was not a threat to the Grand Alliance, since it did not attack anything of theirs. It was only a threat if the GA tried to spread units across the inhabited planets to try to defend in detail and possibly get defeated in detail.

Edit: After thinking about it, you must be talking about using Buccaneer against possessions of the Grand Alliance (perhaps in the Talbot Quadrant or Silesia). The same response from the GA would be expected, but also each planet could have LAC's and system defense pods. At some point they will also have Mycroft. No matter what the Mandarins might think, the SLN can not defend Sol from a response.

Silverwall wrote:

cthia wrote:U.S. Warplanes in Mothballs

Anything the Solarian League can do. . . we can do better.

The SL had the right idea. It's crazy not to 'Waste not want not.' The problem isn't hording, it's not knowing when to. . . throw some shit away!

.

Well they did reactivate a mothballed B52 that had been there 7 years. Of course it took nearly a year of work to do so but it is a lot quicker than making a new aircraft.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/i-ll-b ... ec4c8bf5cf

It would be impossible to build new B-52's. The last one rolled off the assembly line in 1964. They currently have the grand children of those crewmembers flying them and more than likely the great great grand children flying them off to be scrapped in 2045.